As the dinosaurs lived, they pooped and occasionally upchucked.
The team studied the dinosaurs deposits using synchrotron imaging, which revealed the hidden interiors of the fossilized feces.
The teams findings werepublishedtoday inNature.
An artist’s concept of two sauropods in the Jurassic.Illustration: Marcin Ambrozik
This reshapes our understanding of how dinosaurs adapted and rose to prominence in a dynamic and competitive Triassic world.
About 230 million years ago, Poland was part of the supercontinent Pangea.
Dinosaurs, plants, fish, insects, and other living things eked out existence on its shores.
A synchrotron image of fish scales in a dinosaur coprolite. Image: Martin Qvarnström
We were as happy as children opening Christmas presents at every find of a coprolite.
The team took hundreds of coprolite samples to a synchrotron to visualize their internal bitsspecifically seeking undigested food.
The coprolites of large herbivoressauropods, to be exactsurprised the team.
The coprolites contained ferns and other plants, but also charcoal.
The dinosaurs probably fed in a different place than the one where we discovered their fossilized feces.
To this day we have excavated several thousand dinosaur tracks there, he said.
We have something to do for the next 25 years.
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