How even dinosaurs were calorie conscious

Vegetables consumed by herbivore dinosaurs 150 million years ago had a higher nutritional value than the ones human beings consume in the polluted environment of the 21st century. In a recent study, researchers have measured the nutritional value of herbivore dinosaurs’ diet by growing their food in atmospheric conditions similar to that many years ago.

Previously, researchers believed that plants grown in an atmosphere with high carbon dioxide levels had low nutritional value. But a new experimental approach led by Fiona Gill at the University of Leeds has shown that this is not necessarily true.

The team grew dinosaur food plants, such as horsetail and ginkgo, under high levels of carbon dioxide mimicking atmospheric conditions similar to when sauropod dinosaurs, the largest animals ever to roam Earth at that point of time.

An artificial fermentation system was used to simulate digestion of the plant leaves in the sauropods’ stomachs, allowing the researchers to determine the leaves’ nutritional value. The findings showed that many of the plants had significantly higher energy and nutrient levels than previously believed. This suggests that the megaherbivores would have needed to eat much less per day and the ecosystem could potentially have supported a significantly higher dinosaur population density, as much as 20 percent greater than previously estimated.

“The climate was very different in the Mesozoic era – when the huge brachiosaurus and diplodocus lived – with possibly much higher carbon dioxide levels”, Gill said.