Theropod dinosaurs preyed on each other in tough times during the Jurassic period: Study

'ropods', a group of carnivorous disaurs, preyed on disaurs of ir own kind when food was scarce, reveals a study. members of  ropods group are kwn for walking on two legs and varied from small to very large in size. According to a study published in journal PLOS ONE ir bite marks have been found primarily on bones of herbivorous disaurs (that ate plants) but also on bones of or ropods.

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ropods scavenged from corpses of ir fellow disaurs

Studying fossils in Mygatt-Moore Quarry of Coloro, researchers found that ropods likely scavenged from corpses of ir fellow disaurs. Bite marks provide insight on several behaviors of extinct animals among ir own species, including food chain interactions, feeding strategies, prey selection and competition, study said.

researchers found it challenging to match bite marks with specific perpetrators as marks may represent a small number of total bone markings when marks between characters have similar characteristics and when similar animals inhabit same environment, study revealed.

Tracing fossils in general- it can be challenging to figure out who left m and this happens because or animals could have existed at same excavation locations but haven't been found yet, said first author Stephanie Drumheller-Horton, an junct assistant professor and part-time lecturer of paleontology at University of Tennessee, Kxville's department of earth and planetary sciences.

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28.8 percent specimens h at least one ropod bite mark

Out of 2,368 vertebrate fossils surveyed from Mygatt-Moore Quarry, researchers found 684 (28.8%) specimens h at least one ropod bite marks. amount was shocking as it was significantly higher than in or disaur-predominant collections, or accumulations of fossils that include mostly disaur bones.

Jason Schein, a paleontologist and executive director of Bighorn Basin Paleontological Institute, who wasn't part of study informed that large fossil assembls like above mentioned can provide wonderful, detailed windows into complexities of entire ecosystems in ways that single partial skeletons rarely do.

According to previous research, ropod bite marks are especially unique, representing only 4% or less of disaur-dominated assembls. That's a much lower rate than 13.1% to 37.5% frequencies of bones marked by mammals.

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findings left authors with two possible answers: first may be  Mygatt-Moore Quarry was weird and something was going on here where ropods were having to just eat every available resource y could find, which does fit with some of what we kw of ecology and second paleontologists might have led us astray a little bit because of way we collect fossils in field, she said.

Previous collection protocols meant only best-preserved fossils were collected for study and display, which might have left an unusually large amount of marked remains in quarry. researchers would need to expand ir collection of data on bite-marked bones to or sites to provide more context for ir findings.

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