Wild Things:
Life as We Know It
Chewing dinosaurs, climate change, self-sacrificing ants and black bears
- By Amanda Bensen, T.A. Frail, Megan Gambino, Anika Gupta and Sarah Zielinski
- Smithsonian magazine, December 2008
A Sauropod's stomach extracted nutrients from unchewed food and obviated the need for lots of teeth and bulging jaw muscles. (Laurie O'Keefe)
How did sauropods, plant-eaters that were the biggest animals ever to walk the earth, get such massive bodies? They didn't chew, say researchers in Bonn and Zurich. The dinosaurs' "enormous gut capacity" (a Diplodocus) extracted nutrients from unchewed food and obviated the need for lots of teeth and bulging jaw muscles. And that made it possible to have a small head and a looong neck, which let it feast on stuff other beasts couldn't reach.
Additional Sources
"Sauropod Gigantism," P. Martin Sander and Marcus Clauss, Science, October 10, 2008
"Unanticipated consequences of ocean acidification: A noisier ocean at lower pH," Keith C. Hester et al., Geophysical Research Letters, October 1, 2008
"Preemptive Defensive Self-Sacrifice by Ant Workers," Adam Tofilski et al., The American Naturalist, November 2008
"Carnivores, urban landscapes, and longitudinal studies: a case history of black bears," Jon P. Beckmann and Carl W. Lackey, Human-Wildlife Conflicts, Fall 2008
"Primate hunting by bonobos at LuiKotale, Salonga National Park," Marin Surbeck and Gottfried Hohmann, Current Biology, October 14, 2008
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