It turns out that many 'vegetarian crocodiles' were inhabited during the dinosaur era
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A modern crocodile has the image of a fierce reptile living in water, but a research team at the University of Utah Museum of Natural History analyzed the teeth of an ancient crocodile that had already become extinct. It turned out that it was
Repeated Evolution of Herbivorous Crocodyliforms during the Age of Dinosaurs: Current Biology
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822 (19) 30690-6
Some extinct crocs were vegetarians
https://phys.org/news/2019-06-extinct-crocs-vegetarians.html
The crocodile is considered to have appeared in the same Mesozoic and Triassic as the dinosaur appeared, and survives the mass extinction at the end of the Triassic and the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous ( K-Pg boundary ) and continues to exist to this day You are Although there are differences in size since the Triassic, the basic form has hardly changed, and has been prospering on the earth for a very long time.
All the crocodiles found today are similar in shape and carnivore, and have relatively simple conical teeth. However, Dr. Keegan Melstom, a Ph.D. student at Utah University, and Randall Irmis, a teaching instructor, have found that the ancient crocodile has different teeth with different tooth shapes depending on the region of the mouth, according to past research. I guess I had a good eating habit.
Mr. Melstom says, 'A carnivore has teeth with a simple shape, while a herbivore has teeth with a more complex shape. It is intermediate between omnivores that eat both animals and plants.' You In a previous study, Melstom showed that dietary changes in tooth shape apply not only to mammals but also to reptiles. Furthermore, Mr. Melstom considered this idea to be applicable to the already extinct ancient reptiles.
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So, in order to guess what the ancient crocodile ate, Melstom and others applied a technique originally developed for mammals to compare the complexity of the ancient crocodile teeth with modern animals. did. The research team has compared and tested a total of 146 teeth from 16 extinct crocodiles.
Combining quantitative assessment of the condition of the teeth with other morphological features, the research team restored the diet that ancient crocodiles had. As a result, it turned out that the ancient crocodile had higher tooth complexity and a wider diet than previously recognized.
'The most interesting thing in our study is that ancient extinct crocodiles eat plants very often,' says Melstom. Crocodile eating plants appeared relatively early after the late Triassic mass extinction and survived until the end of the Cretaceous mass extinction. During that time, at least three times independently, herbivorous crocodiles appeared to have evolved in the evolution, and Mr. Melstom speculates that herbivorous crocodiles have been born independently about six times.
by Rene Ferrer
Ancient crocodile exists widely from carnivorous ones to herbivorous ones and omnivorous ones, and it seems that herbivorous crocodiles were widely distributed not only in some areas but all over the world. Melstom said that he would like to advance research on why the alligator's diversity increased after the late Triassic mass extinction but did not increase after the end of the Cretaceous mass extinction. The
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