Daily Dino Fact: Sauropods vs. Plants
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
MMmmm... delicious gymnosperms
Q: OK Sauropods had to eat a lot of vegetation if they lived in groups. Were the trees and bushes bigger to supply the dinosaurs needs? Were there dino-trees? -Morty
A: Really great question Morty. The answer isn’t quite what you think. If some paleontologists are to be believed, dinosaurs were warm-blooded animals. This means they had to eat a ton of food. You’d think that crews of sauropods were roaming around the Mesozoic just destroying everything in their path. While this was probably true, they got away with it because animal and plant life was actually more sparse than it is today. There just weren’t as many dinosaurs around, so what damage the sauropods did wasn’t too bad because there weren’t very many of them.
The Mesozoic was a very different landscape than the one we have today. For most of the Mesozoic, plant life consisted entirely of gymnosperms. Gymnosperms are seed-bearing plants like ginkgos, ferns, cycads and conifers. Up until the end of the Jurassic, conifers were the most dominant plants around. It was at the end of the Jurassic that we finally started to see what we call angiosperms, which are the flowering pants we know and love today. It is a safe bet that sauropods munched down on all of these delicious veggies!
To address a couple other questions….
Q: What is the fattest dinosaur ever?i wanna know. -Faiththethird. Answer here.
Q: What was the smallest dinosaur? this question has been bugging me please answer. -Iamrich. Answer here.
Q: Were there any bioluminescent dinosaurs? (which means they glow up :P) - Hornstrkier. A: I could not find any information at all about this. Let me know if you find anything differently!
-Rex