{"id":29294,"date":"2025-06-09T15:00:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-09T15:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=29294"},"modified":"2025-06-09T15:24:35","modified_gmt":"2025-06-09T15:24:35","slug":"first-fossil-proof-found-that-long-necked-dinosaurs-were-vegetarians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=29294","title":{"rendered":"First Fossil Proof Found That Long-Necked Dinosaurs Were Vegetarians"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cIt\u2019s the smoking gun, or the steaming guts,\u201d said a paleontologist from a team that also found that the sauropods didn\u2019t chew their food.<\/p>\n

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In the movie \u201cJurassic Park,\u201d a character proclaims there is nothing to fear from a towering Brachiosaurus, because it\u2019s a \u201cveggie-saurus\u201d that eats only plants. Littlefoot, the \u201cLongneck\u201d dinosaur in the \u201cLand Before Time\u201d series, chows down on leaves, or \u201ctree stars.\u201d But while pop culture and general scientific opinion have agreed for decades that the long-necked sauropod dinosaurs were herbivores, there was no definitive proof found in the fossil record.<\/p>\n

But there were hints of a diet full of green stuff.<\/p>\n

Fossils of sauropods, which stomped across the planet for 130 million years, are plentiful; additionally, herbivores tend to outnumber those of carnivores. The animals had small, peg-like teeth, and their huge, lumbering bodies seemed ill-equipped to chase down prey. \u201cPlants were pretty much the only option,\u201d said Stephen Poropat, a paleontologist and the deputy director of the Western Australian Organic and Isotope Geochemistry Center at Curtin University in Perth.<\/p>\n

A study<\/a> published Monday in the journal Current Biology provides what may be the first concrete proof to support this argument, in the form of fossilized plants discovered in the belly of a sauropod. \u201cIt\u2019s the smoking gun, or the steaming guts, as it were \u2014 the actual direct evidence in the belly of the beast,\u201d Dr. Poropat said. \u201cIt\u2019s never been found before for a sauropod dinosaur.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mackenzie Enchelmaier, collection manager at the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum in Corfield, Queensland, with one of the gut content fossils.<\/span>Stephen Poropat<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Leaves in the fossilized gut contents, which are called cololites, are rare, especially from plant-eating dinosaurs.<\/span>Stephen Poropat<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Dr. Poropat, along with scientists and volunteers from the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum in Corfield, encountered the fossil, which is at the heart of their new paper, on a dig in the Winton Formation in Queensland, Australia, in 2017. The team was excavating a 36-foot-long juvenile Diamantinasaurus matildae, nicknamed Judy after the museum\u2019s co-founder Judy Elliott, when the scientists spotted something strange: a layer of fossilized plant material near the sauropod\u2019s pelvis.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWe knew we\u2019d found something exceptional,\u201d Dr. Poropat said, but he was hesitant to jump to conclusions. Fossilized gut contents, called cololites, are rare, especially from plant-eating dinosaurs, whose leafy diets don\u2019t preserve as well as the bones preserved in the bellies of carnivores.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s the smoking gun, or the steaming guts,\u201d said a paleontologist from a team that also found that the sauropods didn\u2019t chew their food.In the movie \u201cJurassic Park,\u201d a character proclaims there is nothing to fear from a towering Brachiosaurus, because it\u2019s a \u201cveggie-saurus\u201d that eats only plants. Littlefoot, the \u201cLongneck\u201d dinosaur in the \u201cLand Before Time\u201d series, chows down on leaves, or \u201ctree stars.\u201d But while pop culture and general scientific opinion have agreed for decades that the long-necked sauropod dinosaurs were herbivores, there was no definitive proof found in the fossil record.But there were hints of a diet full of green stuff.Fossils of sauropods, which stomped across the planet for 130 million years, are plentiful; additionally, herbivores tend to outnumber those of carnivores. The animals had small, peg-like teeth, and their huge, lumbering bodies seemed ill-equipped to chase down prey. \u201cPlants were pretty much the only option,\u201d said Stephen Poropat, a paleontologist and the deputy director of the Western Australian Organic and Isotope Geochemistry Center at Curtin University in Perth.A study published Monday in the journal Current Biology provides what may be the first concrete proof to support this argument, in the form of fossilized plants discovered in the belly of a sauropod. \u201cIt\u2019s the smoking gun, or the steaming guts, as it were \u2014 the actual direct evidence in the belly of the beast,\u201d Dr. Poropat said. \u201cIt\u2019s never been found before for a sauropod dinosaur.\u201dMackenzie Enchelmaier, collection manager at the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum in Corfield, Queensland, with one of the gut content fossils.Stephen PoropatLeaves in the fossilized gut contents, which are called cololites, are rare, especially from plant-eating dinosaurs.Stephen PoropatDr. Poropat, along with scientists and volunteers from the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum in Corfield, encountered the fossil, which is at the heart of their new paper, on a dig in the Winton Formation in Queensland, Australia, in 2017. The team was excavating a 36-foot-long juvenile Diamantinasaurus matildae, nicknamed Judy after the museum\u2019s co-founder Judy Elliott, when the scientists spotted something strange: a layer of fossilized plant material near the sauropod\u2019s pelvis.\u201cWe knew we\u2019d found something exceptional,\u201d Dr. Poropat said, but he was hesitant to jump to conclusions. Fossilized gut contents, called cololites, are rare, especially from plant-eating dinosaurs, whose leafy diets don\u2019t preserve as well as the bones preserved in the bellies of carnivores.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29296,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29294"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29297,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29294\/revisions\/29297"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}