Dinosaurs Consumed Flowers

The flowers of the Cretacious shook up Earth’s ecosystems, but scientists still do not know how the change affected the world’s most dominant group of animals, the dinosaurs. Only a few groups of dinosaurs increased their numbers, when flowers emerged, such as duck-billed dinosaurs, whereas the animals’ teeth do not show signs of adapting to a new type of food. The apparent lack of adaptation has made some scientists think that the flowers’ conquest of the flora contributed to wiping out the dinosaurs.

Nevertheless, scientists have found evidence that some dinosaurs benefitted from flowers.

In 2000, Australian palaeontologists took a closer look a a fossilized, armoured Kunbarrasaurus dinosaur and found evidence of fruit from a flowering plant in its stomach. Fossilized dinosaur droppings – or coprolites – have also been useful.

In 2005, Chinese scientists examined a coprolite, finding evidence of an early grass species, and in 2015, American scientists analysed a 75-million-year-old coprolite the size of a football, spotting evidence of bark from a flowering plant.

Scientists studied the fossilized Kunbarrasaurus dinosaur under the microscope and found evidence of fruits. A dinosaur dropping held evidence of bark, whose cells were much like those of flowering plants.