New Discovery Reveals Tyrannosaurus’ Diet: Fossil with Well-Preserved Food Found

KOMPAS.com – Researchers have found out what one of the best-known dinosaurs, the tyrannosaurus, ate.

Researchers managed to uncover it thanks to the discovery of a tyrannosaurus fossil with well-preserved food in its stomach.

Also read: What Did the Lips of a T-rex Dinosaur Look Like?

This is the first time a tyrannosaurus fossil with stomach contents has been found.

So, what was on the menu for tyrannosaurs 75 million years ago?

Tyrannosaurus food

Quoted from CNN, Monday (11/12/2023), the fossil reveals that the tyrannosaurus ate the hind legs of two baby dinosaurs.

“Tyrannosaurus was a large predatory species that roamed Alberta and North America in the late Cretaceous. It was a well-known apex predator,” said Darla Zelenitsky, a paleontologist and professor at the University of Calgary in Alberta.

“They walk on two legs and have very short arms,” ​​he continued.

The tyrannosaurus fossil with its stomach contents is Gorgosaurus libratus, which is a cousin of the T-rex.

Gorgosaurus libratus weighed around 350 kilograms and was 4 meters long at its death.

The creature is between 5 and 7 years old and appears to be picky about its prey.

“The animal’s last meal was a small bird-like dinosaur. And Gorgosaurus only ate the hind legs of each of its prey. There were really no other skeletal remains in the abdominal cavity. It was just the hind legs,” explained Zelenitsky.

Also read: How Many T-rex Lived on Earth Before They Went Extinct?

Researchers suspect that Gorgosaurus killed its prey at different times and then tore off its hind legs and ate it, leaving the remains of its carcass.

It’s clear Gorgosaurus preferred its legs for food.

Paleontologists can determine the age of predators and prey by analyzing thinly sliced ​​samples of fossilized bones

“There are signs of growth like rings on trees. And basically we can tell how old a dinosaur is by looking at its bone structure,” said Zelenitsky.

Change in diet

This fossil discovery is also the first solid evidence of a diet long thought to have existed among large predatory dinosaurs.

Scientists had previously hypothesized that young tyrannosaurs had a different diet than adults. This change in diet will occur throughout his life and the discovery of this fossil is the first time researchers have found evidence of this.

“Juvenile tyrannosaur skeletons are rare to find so the fossil is very important. Apart from that, we can learn a lot about the diet of this extinct animal through its stomach contents,” said paleoecologist Kat Schroeder from Yale University who was not involved in the research.

Also read: Not a T-rex, this is the first predator on Earth

The stomach contents of juvenile Tyrannosaurs reveal that at that stage of life they enjoyed hunting small prey. Most likely because the predator’s body is not yet suitable for larger prey.

The study was published in the journal Science Advances.

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2023-12-13 05:35:00
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