Иногда вместе с костями динозавров-вегетарианцев находят кучки гладких камешков. Dinosaurs specially swallowed them. Stones accumulated in the stomach and, like a millstone, helped to grind hard leaves and stems.
A variety of diet
Like modern ungulates, dinosaurs-Vegetarians used the most different food. Some dinosaurs ate with juicy aquatic plants, others plunged down stunted ferns, and others, with the help of a long neck, could reach the heights of very high trees.
Little assistants
Plant food is not as nutritious as, for example, insects or meat. Huge diploda required half a ton of food per day! To digest a huge plant mass, dinosaurs resorted to the help of microscopically small organisms bacteria living in their stomachs.
Connected by one chain
In the world of wildlife, plants use the energy of the Sun to produce nutrients. They are eaten by herbivores rodents, ungulates. They are preyed upon by a variety of predators. It turns out that plants and animals are connected by a single food chain, all depend on each other.
Role reversal
Millions of years ago there were also herbivores and carnivores. And all these roles were divided between dinosaurs. That’s why we call this period the age of the dinosaurs. And only when the dinosaurs became extinct did mammals and birds come to the fore.
Among the dinosaurs, sauropods stood out with grandiose sizes. Representatives of this group were the largest and heaviest land inhabitants of the Earth in the entire history of its existence.
Diplodocus skeleton looked like a suspension bridge. The spine was, as it were, thrown between the legs-supports. This design could withstand huge loads.
wonderful tail
Diplodocus had a very long and flexible tail, tapering towards the end. Swinging it like a whip, this peaceful giant could fight off enemies.
Seismosaurus
The name “seismosaurus” means “lizard that shakes the earth”. Very little is known about this giant, because so far only a few bones of its skeleton have been found. But it is also clear from them how huge it was!
Brachiosaurus
Brachiosaurus was the heaviest and tallest dinosaur. The front legs of this giant were much longer than the hind legs. Thanks to this, stretching his neck, he could feast on branches from trees at the height of a five-story building, which other dinosaurs could not reach.
Dinosaur life
Fossils can tell a lot about not only what dinosaurs looked like and what they ate, but also how they lived. Studying them, scientists came to the conclusion that many dinosaurs did not live alone, but in herds, like modern antelopes, zebras, buffaloes. Dinosaurs built nests close to each other, grazed together and set off on a long journey if food in the old place became scarce.
Proof of
The fact that some dinosaurs lived in groups is proved by accumulations of bones of dinosaurs of the same species. And sometimes scientists manage to find fossilized footprints left by a past herd of dinosaurs. The tracks showed that the kids kept in the middle of the herd, and the largest dinosaurs walked on the sides. Perhaps they were males ready to repel a predator attack.
Living in a herd has many benefits. Dozens of keen eyes, sensitive noses and ears notice a predator faster than one pair. In a large herd, some of the animals can safely graze, because someone always stays on the alert and warns the rest of the danger. And if you have to defend yourself, then keeping the defense together is also easier than alone.
dinosaur colony
In North America, paleontologists were lucky enough to find about two dozen nests of duck-billed dinosaurs, Mayasaurs, located close to each other. This means that these dinosaurs nested in colonies the way some birds do: gulls, terns, rooks. Together, these birds furiously drive predators away from their nests. If the imposing maiasaurs did the same, then the predators who encroached on their nests had a hard time!
