Dental News - Dinosaur teeth give insight into their feeding habits

Dental Tribune International

Tue. 8. May 2018

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CAMBRIDGE, Mass., US: Recent research has offered a new understanding of dinosaurs’ feeding behaviour by means of their tooth wear. Predatory, bird-like theropod dinosaurs from the Upper Cretaceous (100.5–66 million years ago) of Spain and Canada all relied on a puncture-and-pull bite strategy to kill their prey. However, close examination of patterns of wear and modelling of their teeth suggest that these dinosaurs were not necessarily in direct competition for their next meal. Apparently, some of the dinosaurs preyed on larger, struggling prey, while others stuck to softer or smaller fare.

“All these dinosaurs were living at the same time and place, so it is important to know if they were competing for food resources or if they were aiming for different prey,” said lead author Dr Angelica Torices, former postdoctoral fellow at the University of Alberta in Edmonton in Canada and current staff member of the University of La Rioja in Logroño in Spain.

Torices and her colleagues examined the microwear on the teeth to see whether any pattern could be established in the manner of eating of the various dinosaurs. Furthermore, the researchers used a modelling approach called finite element analysis to explore the effects of the dinosaurs’ teeth at different cutting angles.

Both approaches led to the same general conclusion. All of the dinosaurs studied employed a puncture-and-pull feeding movement, in which parallel scratches formed while they bit down into prey, followed by oblique scratches as the head was pulled backwards with closed jaws. However, the researchers reported that the different tooth shapes performed differently under a variety of simulated biting angles.

The evidence suggests that Dromaeosaurus and Saurornitholestes were well adapted for handling struggling prey or for processing bone as part of their diet. By comparison, Troodon teeth were more likely to fail at awkward bite angles. The findings suggest that troodontids may have preferred softer prey such as invertebrates, smaller prey that required a less powerful bite, or immobile prey such as carrion.

The study, titled “Puncture-and-pull biomechanics in the teeth of predatory coelurosaurian dinosaurs”, was published in Current Biology on 7 May 2018. The study was conducted in collaboration with researchers from the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto in Canada, the University of Alberta and the University of Zaragoza in Spain.

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