Grass Grazing In Dinosaurs Confirmed

longhawn writes "Reuters AlertNet reports that a team of researchers found evidence in India that dinosaurs ate grass. This discovery was made when scientists found pieces of grass in fossilized dinosaur dung (coprolites). Prior to this finding, scientists did not even know that grass existed at that time." From the article: "Few scientists had ever thought that dinosaurs grazed, because there was no evidence that grasses existed that long ago. They believed that the grinding teeth found in some dinosaur fossils were used for munching other plant matter, perhaps trees, like modern beavers chew on today."

Comments

You left them out :(

[DrEldarion]

like modern beavers chew on today.

Nobody cares about the outdated beavers :(

Re:You left them out :(

[tloh]

Wow! Who would've thought such information would be discernable when soft tissue like digestive organs are almost never fossilized?!?! I'm racking my brains and I can't think of a single modern reptile that can handle the same diet. Do we have anything to compare with to get some idea of what form the internal organs of herbivore dinosaurs might take? God! I've got to be missing something... What modern reptile eats grass?

Re:You left them out :(

[TapeCutter]

"God! I've got to be missing something... What modern reptile eats grass?"

Yes, you are missing something. Dinosaurs were not reptiles, many belive their closest living relatives are birds. Also they didn't get the "ate grass" evidence from digestive organs, it was found in fossilised dino turds. Why not read TFA next time?

Re:You left them out :(

[Reziac]

And how do they know that the grass doesn't come from the intestines of some critter that the dinosaur in question ate?

But there are modern herbivorous reptiles (iguanas, tortises, others that don't come to mind at 5am). And there's no rule that says reptiles can't come in herbivore, omnivore, and carnivore versions, just like birds, fish, and mammals do.

Oh, and beaver (rodent family) don't eat trees. They eat tree BARK, not the woody part. They cut down trees to get at the tender bark on the younger branches (and sometimes just girdle young trees, thus killing them). When beaver get overpopulated, they often effectively clearcut their home territory.

Re:You left them out :(

[dalutong]

You are right about the birds. But him talking about the digestive organs makes perfect sense (with his incorrect premise.) Some species can not eat grass because their digestive tract can not handle it. Just as some can't handle meat. If we had found meat in some herbivore's dung people could legitimately ask, "what do we not know about this herbivore? did they find any part of its digestive tract to indicate that it was different somehow?"

Re:You left them out :(

[utnow]

The big point of the article isn't "wow they were herbivores". The point was that they were eating grass... along with other vegitation. If they're digestive tract (in this case, teeth) could handle the cellulose in other plant matter, then there's nothing too strange about them eating grass, aside from the part where we didn't know grass even existed durring this time period.... and that was from the summary! ;o)

Re:You left them out :(

[tloh]

Hold on there fella, don't go picking a fight where none was offered. I don't believe there is yet a consensus that dinosaurs are *NOT* reptiles. Some have speculated they share certain features with birds, but that doesn't mean they *ARE* all birds. Secondly, if grass was found in dino turd, doesn't it stand to reason their digestive system are adapted to handle the material? I merely meant it kind of neat to know such things despite not having any direct evidence for what the internal organs might be like. Now, if certain dinosaurs ate grass in the past, it is concievable that there just *might* be modern reptiles with the same digestive ability to process grass. Thatt is why I wondered if we have anything to compare with to get an idea of what the digestive system of herbivore dinosaur might be like. It should be interesting to compare those biological systems with mammal grazers who dominate this ecological niche today but grew into this role independently. So be a good boy and help develope this discussion constructively by at least *trying* to find a modern grass eating reptile before you declare everyone you don't like to be an illiterate idiot.

Not knowing who you are, your other posts on slashdot seems reasonably intelligent. But you have *GOT* to drop the attitude that there is only one insight to be gained and your's is better than anyone elses. Are all aussies so arrogant and volatile? It's people like you and Russell Crowe that give the land down under a bad name.

Re:You left them out :(

[Conanymous Award]

Yes, dinosaurs are reptiles. Nobody has seriously proposed anything else. Rather, birds are dinosaurs and not the other way around. You don't classify earlier life forms on the basis of their descendants.

BTW, isn't "grass-grazing dinosaurs" quite a tautology? I mean, what else can you graze than grass?

Re:You left them out :(

[jeschust]

And how do they know that the grass doesn't come from the intestines of some critter that the dinosaur in question ate? Coming from a rudimentary understanding of paelontolgy, if a dinosaur with sharp, cutting teeth is found with grass in the stomach area, it would probably be assumed to have eaten a herbivore. TFA mentions that the droppings are of such a large size that they are assumed to be from a large sauropod, a type known to have the "gnashing, chewing" type of teeth exclusively.

Re:You left them out :(

[TapeCutter]

"It's people like you and Russell Crowe that give the land down under a bad name."

Yeah, telephone abuse is a real problem over here in the land of convicts.

"be a good boy...at least *trying* to find a modern grass eating reptile"

When I was a boy I had a "Blue tounge" lizard that ate egg & lettuce sandwiches, does that count? Cows and Caterpillers both eat grass, I doubt there digestive organs are the same or even similar.

You missed the point of TFA, it is not about what animals ate grass, it is about the discovery that grass existed alongside dinosaurs.

"Are all aussies so arrogant and volatile?"

Nah, me and Rus just like to pick fights...

Re:You left them out :(

[Reziac]

True enough, and so sayeth TFA, tho by the time I entered the discussion, it had degenerated to generic arguments :)

Many critters eat strange things sometimes, tho. Frex, horses love dry dog food, and will sometimes nibble carrion. And my dogs think watermelon rinds are candy. Makes you wonder. :)

Re:You left them out :(

[tloh]

Yeah, telephone abuse is a real problem over here in the land of convicts.

Ha! Quit the contrary, it seems maybe the telephone (industry) is doing the abusing .

When I was a boy I had a "Blue tounge" lizard that ate egg & lettuce sandwiches, does that count? Cows and Caterpillers both eat grass, I doubt there digestive organs are the same or even similar.

hmm.... Egg and lettuce sandwiches are hardly found in nature as a normal food source. I don't really know if you can consider cows and caterpillars as fulfilling similar ecological roles. They don't eat grass the same way (I'll explain this later) Secondly, the two are most certainly not at the same position on the food chain. Whoever wrote the article was excited for legitimate reasons. The fact that grass existed earlier than we thought drastically changes our understanding of the ecological landscape when dinosaurs roamed the earth. But actually I'm excited for the same reason. You have a large animal that eats grass, like modern rhumanid mammals. Thing is, we know a lot about modern rhumanid mammals: from their predator/prey relationships with other species, to their growth and development, to the influence of percipitation and other seasonal factors on their survival. If herbivore dinosaurs did the same thing *in the same (or similar) way* that tells us a lot about the early Earth. When you start thinking about these parallels, all sorts of interesting questions arise. If their digestive systems worked similarly, did sauropods belch methane like modern cows? Would there have been enough of that to play a significant part in a potential greenhouse situation? The existance of grass so much earlier than we thought IS astonishing. I'm just wondering about the consequences of that fact from a particular perspective.

Nah, me and Rus just like to pick fights...

Well, I have to say you fight like a gentleman. (^_^) I half expect you to be just a troll simply looking to flame someone. You do yourself credit for conducting yourself with a measure of civility in this discussion. I respect a person who responds to missunderstanding with reasonable discourse.

Re:You left them out :(

[Kelson]

You can generally identify a carnivore, herbivore, or omnivore by looking at the teeth, and when it comes to dinosaurs, that's something we have *plenty* of.

Re:You left them out :(

[TapeCutter]

"You do yourself credit for conducting yourself with a measure of civility in this discussion. I respect a person who responds to missunderstanding with reasonable discourse."

ditto.

And in a few million years...

[Xanlexian]

They'll find out that us hairless monkeys smoked grass!

Re:And in a few million years...

[alexjohnc3]

Toe harles monkez sund pety stuupid? (Wow... that was pretty pointless...)

I eat grass too!!

[Prophetic_Truth]

Tastes best in brownies.

Re:I eat grass too!!

[Anonymous Coward]

thats exactly how they came up with this theory: giant... steaming... brownies

Re:I eat grass too!!

[Deltaspectre]

That's weed, not grass....

Moron

DUH!

[DavidLeeRoth]

Of course they had grass. Just look at the Land Before time XXXXXXXVVVVV. http://www.animationusa.com/picts/univpict/family. jpg (notice the pretty grass?)

Re:DUH!

[aussie_a]

And this is where Slashdotters get their scientific information from. And slashdotters frequently post on Wikipedia. And people wonder why wikipedia isn't a trustworthy source of information.

Re:DUH!

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought most /.ers worried about posters here completely lacking a sense of humour?

Slashdot Logic

[Lifix]

Science: Scientists find piece of grass in dinosaur dung.
Slashdot: Grass Grazing Dinosaurs CONFIRMED!

I'm glad that slashdot is prepared to make the leap from pieces of grass found in a pile of dung to active grazing by that animal.

Re:Slashdot Logic

[ozmanjusri]

I'm glad that slashdot is prepared to make the leap from pieces of grass found in a pile of dung to active grazing by that animal.

So what you're saying is that the grass might have climbed onto the poo pile and settled itself in there?

Not a bad survival strategy, when you think about it.

Dino pinches out a log, turns around for a ritual sneaky peek and sniff. Furrows brow, "Hmmm, I don't remember eating that". Shrugs shoulders, ambles off in search of less clever prey.

Smart, that grass.

Re:Slashdot Logic

[kfg]

Yeah, it probably just ate something that was eating grass.

KFG

Re:Slashdot Logic

[volfro]

From TFA:

They sent some photographs and then samples to Stromberg, who spotted tiny silica structures called phytoliths.

"It's indisputable that these are from grasses. The shape of these phytoliths indicate that they are from grasses," said Dolores Piperno...

They didn't find whole blades. They found remnants from several different types of grasses. Which suggests to these paleontologists (not Slashdot) that 1: the dinosaurs ate grass; and 2: that the grass had been around for a long enough time to adapt and diversify.

The scientists made the leap, not slashdot. RTFA.

Re:Slashdot Logic

[aussie_a]

Yeah, it probably just ate something that was eating grass.

Scoff if you will, but this isn't that far-fetched. It wasconfirmed that grass existed when the dinosaurs were around. But it could have been a mammal (they existed when the dino's did) that ate the grass. However it was found in a titanosaur's (a herbivore) shit. They didn't go around munching on mammals.

Re:Slashdot Logic

[theguyfromsaturn]

As far as I know, this is quite a stunning discovery. Until recently, it was believed that grass only appeared a few million years ago. Not several tens of millions.

Re:Slashdot Logic

[kfg]

Scoff if you will. . .

That's what I did. For that matter, so did you.

However it was found in a titanosaur's (a herbivore) shit. They didn't go around munching on mammals.

Therefore it couldn't have been a mammal that ate the grass. So why do you even bring them up? I didn't.

KFG

Re:Slashdot Logic

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that bad. The only more conclusive fossil evidence for eating something is if you find stomach contents inside a skeleton, so the general interpretation is reasonable, even if the suggestion of full-time grass grazing isn't.

Regardless of whether you think the assignment of these coprolites to dinosaurs is correct, even the discovery that grasses were present in the Cretaceous is a huge discovery, because, until this paper, it was thought grasses did not show up until after the dinosaurs were extinct. Their pollen is not known until well into the Cenozoic Era.

Other articles:
National Geographic, with picture
BBC

The original article in Science (but you need a subscription to view the full article): Prasad et al. 2005

Apparently the grass is only a small component of the plant debris in the coprolite, so, even though it appears to be there, it was apparently a minor part of the diet. I also worry a little about the possibility of contamination with modern grass phytoliths (mineral structures produced within the vascular tissues of the grasses), but I assume the reviewers would have scrutinized that possibility very carefully.

Re:Slashdot Logic

[The_Wilschon]

The mammal could have eaten the grass, then crawled into the titanosaur shit, had all its flesh and bones eaten away by the titanostench, and only the grass remained.... tragic. ;-p

Re:Slashdot Logic

[kfg]

If you read more carefully written popular articles about this finding than the one linked to, written by authors who specialize in science reporting, you'll find that they say it is "suggestive" that the dinosaur at grass. The only thing that is really accepted as proven at this point is that grass existed at that time.

The OP's scoff is misplaced when aimed at "those whacky scientists." It should be aimed at the those whacky idiot reporters who report that the whaky scientists found "pieces of grass" when they did no such thing.

However, the distribution of the grass phytoliths in the copralite and the fact that they came from multiple species of grass is highly suggestive of consumption.

KFG

Re:Slashdot Logic

[Anonymous Coward]

However it was found in a titanosaur's (a herbivore) shit.

about 35 million years ago... "wilma what's for diner" "oh the usual fred, Fern newtons" fred the titanasaurus takes a big gobble of his fern newton "blech! there was a rat in my fern newton Again! stupid packaged foods, if this wasn't the stone age i'm sure we'd have some QA to enure those vermin don't get in the food"

Re:Slashdot Logic

[tompaulco]

Interesting that they concluded that grass existed at the time of dinosaurs rather than that dinosaurs existed at the time of grass.
I suppose it is more difficult to determine when grass was around, as it doesn't fossilize easily. However, it should be possible for it to make mud impressions such as we have seen with ferns and tree leaves.

Re:Slashdot Logic

[kfg]

"However, it should be possible for it to make mud impressions such as we have seen with ferns and tree leaves."

It can; and it does. It's just that none has been found dating that far back. One of the significant things about this finding is, again, the diversity of speciation of the grass. That shows that grass had already been around for long enough to develop that degree of speciation, pushing the development of the grasses back much farther the simple age of this particular fossil.

It can be hard to think, in this day when the grasses are completely unbiquitous and among the first plants to colonize any exposed soil, that once upon a time there was rich vegetable life, but no grass, but such is the case. They belong to a family of plants that developed at a later date than other types, much as the mammals developed at a later date than other forms of animal life.

The question is simply how far back do they go.

The issue is also a good example of how evidence that is staring you right in the face can be hard to think about as well, as people have been looking at grass eating dino and mammal teeth for 100 years and trying to find ways to explain them away, rather than conclude they were used for eating grass.

But it's also a good example of how as evidence mounts the scientific method tends to force a "reality based" view of the world, like it or not.

Sometimes it just takes awhile to gather the needed evidence and to give people time to be able see it as it is.

And, of course, some people refuse to ever see.

KFG

Next thing you know

[Osmosis_Garett]

... dinosaurs will also have drank water from lakes!

Is this actually some kind of valuable discovery? Don't pretty much all species eat grass in one form or another?

Re:Next thing you know

[Wisgary]

You see... the thing is... they didn't even know grass existed at that time.

If TreesExist == true, then GrassExist == True?

[CriminalNerd]

Personally, if there were a lot of trees in the past, I think that there would have been more than a lot of grass. And if there were leaf chomping dinos, there were grass chomping dinos too. Besides...Were stegosaurs intelligently capable enough to actually attempt to reach anything positioned higher than 1m above ground level?

Re:If TreesExist == true, then GrassExist == True?

[Eightyford]

Grass doesn't have to exist just because trees exist. Stegosaurs could eat plants on the ground ...it's not like any amount of brain power could allow them to climb trees anyways.

Re:If TreesExist == true, then GrassExist == True?

[Bazzalisk]

Grass is a particular type of plant, specificly a particular type of flowering plant - flowering plants first appeared on earth about three quarters of the way through the time when dinosaurs existed (pre-flowering planst including large ferns which reproduce using windblown polen) - until now it was believed that grass didn't evolve until much much later.

There were trees for a very long time before there was grass.

Re:If TreesExist == true, then GrassExist == True?

[BushCheney08]

Your reasoning is just as flawed as saying If ManExist == true, then DinosaursExist == true.
Different forms of life have existed at different periods in time.

Re:If TreesExist == true, then GrassExist == True?

[Kelson]

As others have mentioned, trees and grasses are very different types of plants, and the presence of one does not necessarily imply the presense of the other.

Previously it was believed that grasses didn't appear until after the K-T extinction -- the end of the dinosaur era, and the predominant ground cover was thought to be mosses or something similar.

Re:Gary Glitter child-fucking in Vietnam

[CriminalNerd]

Is there a point for the parent to post a news report about a pedophile in a dinosaur thread?

Idiot

[Commander Trollco]

This is big news because it sets back the timeline on angiosperms(flowering plants). Grasses are about as primitive a flowering plant as you get. Previously, the earliest forms in the fossil record are Plants similar to today's Magnoliaceae, from Cretaceous-era fossils. With Titanosaurs being Jurassic, I assume...
Life as we know it today is imtimately bound up with the flowering plants, and of would be radically different in a Gymnosperm-only world.

Re:Idiot

[10am-bedtime]

angiosperms brought us long-distance SEX -- all hail angiosperms!

Re:Idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

This is big news because it sets back the timeline on angiosperms(flowering plants). Grasses are about as primitive a flowering plant as you get...

No, that's not why it's big news. It's big news because it pushes back the timeline on grass evolution -- the article states the scientists were looking at fossils from the late Cretaceous, about 65 million years old. Angiosperms are known in the fossil record back to around 130 million years.

Q.E.D. grasses are not "about as primitive flowering plants as you get."

Re:Idiot

[flyingsquid]

It doesn't set back the timeline on angiosperms. Lots of advanced angiosperm fossils are known from the Late Cretaceous of North America. For instance, Cannabaceae, the family best known for hemp and hops, is known from the Hell Creek of North America; ginger roots are known from the Late Cretaceous of Alberta, about 75 million years ago. And grasses are not primitive. Grasses look simple, but they are very advanced- their leaves, for instance, are highly modified.

Re:Idiot

[InfinityEdge]

Grasses are not the most primitive of angiosperms, they are some of the most advanced. Grasses (and other wind pollinated angiosperms) evolved from insect pollinated angiosperms, not the other way around. Most angiosperms are dicots, grasses are monocots. Grasses have a few new tricks compaired to their ancestors: C4 pathways and a ground meristem. This allows them to grow really fast (especially in hot climates) and be unfazed by grazing.

Botany is fun.

Re:Idiot

[Anthony]

Not Jurassic. The article mentioned Late Cretaceous so it is not such a big leap.

Im confused

[deft]

so, does this mean there were dinosaurs?

or is this how god planned?
or perhaps, is this the devil planting stuff so we lose faith in god?

crap, ima pray to the flying sphaghetti monster for guidance.

ramen.

Re:Im confused

[TenLow]

The FSM put the grass in the dung for the scientists to find, just to keep the controversey going over if god exists or not. Although I wonder how much money is spent on looking at dinosaur dung anyways? Makes me think of the term "flushing it down the toilet" I'm sorry, that was a shitty joke.

Re:Im confused

[seven7h]

Ok, I'll bite.

Firstly there is no reference in the Bible to there being no Dinosaurs, the reason that the word Dinosaur does not appear in the bible is that the word was actually invented after the new king james version of the bible was writen. So as far as the Bible tells there could easily have been dinosaurs, and from the fossils it is undeniable that they did exist.

But what happened to them?? Well basically they died out, they became extinct as alot of other animals have done and continue to do. Think about it, these were some large vegeterian animals so a whole lot of them could not exist at once or they would eat all their food, and since they were large they would also have been a sought after aminal to hunt as they would have alot of meat

. And what caused there to be a large number of fossils? This is explained in Genesis from Noah's flood, all the dinosaurs that could not swim would have perished and been covered by a large amount of silt and dirt.

Re:Im confused

[tloh]

grandparent was making a joke. lighten up.
I think our dino friends must have also prayed to the FSM. I'll bet dinos also made pasta and they taste great with cretaceous ingredients.
Yummm....

Re:Im confused

[pnewhook]

I thought you were going to say that they died out because Noah just couldn't fit several hundred pairs of 100 foot long dinosaurs on the ark.

Or maybe he discovered dinosaurs existed AFTER he built the boat, then said 'fukit I'm not starting over now - it's starting to rain! I don't think anyone will notice them missing anyway.'

Re:Im confused

[M1FCJ]

they were large they would also have been a sought after aminal to hunt as they would have alot of meat

Don't tell that to lions otherwise they will start hunting hippos, elephants and rhynos! Lots of meat you know, better than those skimpy grazers.

Re:Im confused

[Anonymous Coward]

It is consistant with the biblical account that everything existed when life "started".

Wow...

[RootsLINUX]

This discovery was made when scientists found pieces of grass in fossilized dinosaur dung (coprolites)

Man, and I thought I had it tought digging through million year old crap (code) at work. I never imagined that would literally be someone's job >_>

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

i'd imagine "semen collector" would top that

Re:Wow...

[BushCheney08]

You'd be surprised. Documentaries of these professionals in action seem to sell very well.

Bollywood's Jurassic park

[axonis]

I can just see Bollywood doing its own version of Jurassic park now.

Huh?! o_0

[DigiShaman]

We've found fossilized plants and animals on this planet. Yet, blades of grass numbering in the trillions throughout history are just NOW being found in our fossil record? Am I missing something? Is grass that really hard to fossilize in comparison to other plants on Earth?

I'm shaking my head now thinking "WTF"!

Re:Huh?! o_0

[kfg]

"Am I missing something?"

Yes.

KFG

Re:Huh?! o_0

[sleppy1]

It's hard to get grass to jump into a tar pit.

Re:Huh?! o_0

[JPyun]

IIRC, grass is a sort of flowering plant, which didn't come about for a while. Possibly after the extinction of dinos. Kind of hard to think of nowadays, seeing how grass is kind of ubiquitous.

Re:Huh?! o_0

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably because grass is much softer than things like branches and trunks, and extremely thin to boot, so wouldn't yield prominent fossils. Anyhow, the article isn't really "We found fossilized grass! Yay!" but rather "Grass dates back to the dinosaurs! Wow!"

Re:Huh?! o_0

[BushCheney08]

Yes, it is. Keep in mind that most plant fossils are merely imprints of the plant (or seeds or spores), which means that the mud/silt/ash had to dry and harden before the organic matter decomposed. For some types of plants this works because the outer skins are tougher (think bark or stalky plants). With grass, it's pretty much all soft material, meaning it will usually decompose before a good imprint can be made. Another side to this is that many fertile grass-growing regions are not exactly conducive to preservation. Also, grass fossils have been found, just not dating back to the Cretaceous (145-65M years ago). This is the first indication that grass did exist back then, and had existed long enough to have diversified.

Re:Huh?! o_0

[Bazzalisk]

It's also possible that grass at that time was only common in a very limmited area and didn't spread accross the globe until later.

Also bear this in mind - the fossil record is so incomplete that we have gaps in it millions of years in length during which we've found no fossils. In fact if we were all to die out tomorrow it's quite unlikely that any human fossils would survive in 65 million years time - that's how small an amount of time we've existed for on a geological scale.

Re:Huh?! o_0

[Anonymous Coward]

Earth history does not consist of the succession: A) no plants, B) all modern plants.

The order of appearance in Earth history goes more like:

A) no land plants, B) spore plants, C) seed plants, D) flowering plants, E) grasses (which are a type of flowering plant)

It takes a few hundred million years for that succession to play out (e.g., the earliest land plants known are based on spores from the latest Ordovician Period, which is over 400 million years ago, flowering plants don't show up until the Early Cretaceous, around 140 million years ago).

So, grass is a relatively new evolutionary development. Even with this new discovery (from the Cretaceous Period), it still is. Grass in the Cenozoic Era, where it is best known, is indeed as abundant as fossils as you would expect it to be.

By contrast, if you were walking through a Jurassic Period forest, or a Carboniferous Period forest, you would see plenty of plants -- from trees to low ground cover -- but grass wouldn't be there, and the mix of plants would be fairly strange (e.g., in the Carboniferous, there would be tree-sized spore plants, the modern relatives of which are perhaps 10cm tall, and in the Jurassic you'd see plenty of cycads and ginkgoes). It is weird to think about a world without grass, yes, but it is no stranger than imagining what it would be like with dinosaurs roaming around. Plant history is just as strange in its own ways. Ferns with seeds instead of spores is pretty odd, as are giant lycopod trees 10 or 20 metres tall -- they were the "dinosaurs" of their era.

Look up the subject of "paleobotany" if you want more details.

Re:Huh?! o_0

[Tablizer]

if we were all to die out tomorrow it's quite unlikely that any human fossils would survive in 65 million years time

They will just use AOL disks to identify our species. They'll probably name us Aolediscious or the like.

Re:Huh?! o_0

[Tablizer]

Yet, blades of grass numbering in the trillions throughout history are just NOW being found in our fossil record? ... Is grass that really hard to fossilize in comparison to other plants on Earth?

From another part of slashdot, they identified the grass by a certain crystaline structure/pattern that grass leaves behind, not impressions of grass blades themselves. Normally, scattered blades leave the crystals too far apart to recognize. In this case they were all bunched together in fossilized dino poop so that they were easier to recognize.

If you drew a small "W" on a picture of a bunch of brush or soil, others may not spot the W. However, if you drew of bunch of W's together in one spot, one is more likely to recognize them.

Veggie Dinos

[metlin]

Oooh!

Even the dinosaurs in India are vegetarian! ;)

(well, as an Indian who happens to be vegetarian, I reserve the right to make such obviously ridiculous jokes)

Re:Veggie Dinos

[arbitraryaardvark]

Holy Cowasaurus, Batman.

Re:Veggie Dinos

[Reziac]

Just be glad you don't have sacred dinosaurs roaming the streets :)

Re:Veggie Dinos

[Bogtha]

Creationists believe that Tyrannosaurs were originally vegetarian, but Adam's sin cursed them!

Re:Veggie Dinos

[escay]

yea this is nothing new...pretty much everything in India eats grass at some point in it's life.didn't need a team of scientists going thru fossilized shit to come up with this...

Re:Veggie Dinos

[mattwarden]

(well, as an Indian who happens to be vegetarian, I reserve the right to make such obviously ridiculous jokes)

Children, today we are going to learn how to change a -1, Troll comment to a +5, Funny comment.

Re:Veggie Dinos

[geekoid]

Everyone has the right to make ridiculous jokes. I find in counter productive and limiting to the culture and a burden on society to segrigate jokes in any manner.

Re:Veggie Dinos

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, a newspaper headline actually claims Indian dinosaurs were vegetarians.

Re:Veggie Dinos

[woolio]

Hmmm. Now we know what food the non-vegetarian dinos ate...

Carnivores like cats eat grass too

[axonis]

Hey don't carnivores like cats eat grass too to help with digestion

Re:Carnivores like cats eat grass too

[aussie_a]

Were Titanosaurs carnivores? (Rhetorical question).

Re:Carnivores like cats eat grass too

[gringer]

Only if the Titans ate meat as well (Rhetorical answer).

Cue on the discussions about if false then X...

Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

On Thursday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Dung

Well Duh!

[Anonymous Coward]

Duh! Of course grass existed back then. It was only 6000 years ago. And dinosaurs and plants were only created two days apart. C'mon people!

This confirms decade long theories

[G3ckoG33k]

I don't rememeber who came up with the original theory, but grass browsing in dinosaurs has been suspected for decades. For example the molar teeth in triceratops (and allies) and in the duck billed all are made for grass grinding, not those licking angiosperms which are much softer. Was it "wild and hairy ideas" Bakker who first proposed it?

Re:This confirms decade long theories

[ironman_one]

Yes but this is the proof of that theory.

Re:This confirms decade long theories

[flyingsquid]

Setting a few things straight here-

(1) First, this is NOT the first evidence for Cretaceous grass- there's been some evidence from pollen grains in India, South America, and Africa. See New Scientist for a better writeup. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8336.

(2) This grass (assuming it is grass and not one of its close relatives, which can also deposit silica in their tissues) is from India, not North America. The flora of North America is very well known(from both pollen and leaf fossils), and there's zero evidence for grass in North America until substantially later. So it's unlikely, to say the least, that the American duckbills and horned dinosaurs ate grass.

(3) A blade does not a grassland make. It may have existed, but it was hardly common in the way it is today. Grasslands didn't become widespread until millions of years after the dinosaurs became extinct, so it's extremely unlikely that any dinosaur was a specialized grazer, or even that grass made up a significant portion of the diet of dinosaurs.

Re:This confirms decade long theories

[LnxAddct]

I believe this article is more of a "Here is more evidence to back that theory of grass grazing" type of thing. The duck billed dinosaurs (Ornithopods in general) are considered the cows of of the past... it has been known for sometime that they graze.
Regards,
Steve

Re:This confirms decade long theories

[Anonymous Coward]

No it hasn't. Grass is only supposed to have evolved about 5 million years ago.

That is why the artists that did their research always show no grass in their renditions.

Re:Gary Glitter child-fucking in Vietnam

[hdparm]

It's Gary Glitter, man. Not just a pedofile - dinosaur pedofile.

Indirect Evidence?

[core plexus]

My dog sometimes eats ground squirrels, mice, Moose, and other grass eaters. Sometimes, she even eats grass. My point is her stools contain grass, more often from the guts of the animals she eats.

I understand that the point is that grass was not known to exist during this time, but I'm saying could the dinos just be eating grass eaters?

Re:Indirect Evidence?

[sleppy1]

Your dog eats moose? Whole?

I'm not a dinosaurologist but, it sounds like some of these beasties had big herbivorous animal teeth. Maybe they're big enough to eat small animals whole, but they probably would have preferred grass, if they're anything like the herbivorous animals that exist today with similar teeth.

Re:Indirect Evidence?

[Anonymous Coward]

...which would make sense if there were, you know, the bones of them there grass eaters in the dung as well? The coprolith contained the usual veggie dino-food (FTFA: "cycads and conifers and other plants known to have grown during the Cretaceous period") along with the grass. Obviously the dinosaur was a vegetarian.

Re:Indirect Evidence?

[core plexus]

Not whole, else she would fight with me. But she sometimes enjoys some 'sausage', or guts if you prefer.

To the other poster: She doesn't like bones.

Re:Indirect Evidence?

[damsa]

It's also possible that dinos swallowed stones similar to that of some birds to aid digestion. In swallowing the stones, the dinos also inadverdently swallowed grass as well.

Re:Indirect Evidence?

[Liam Slider]

Probably because the dinosaur was an herbivore, and didn't eat animals at all. Just like a lot of species around today.

Re:Indirect Evidence?

[wkitchen]

My dog sometimes eats ground squirrels, mice, Moose, and other grass eaters.

Holy crap! I bet you don't have any problems with burglars.

Duh

[laxian]

Of course there was grass. What else would they have had on their lawns back then? Stupid.

Re:From the makers of Global Warming Theory comes.

[abigor]

Clearly, the parent is some sort of subtle joke, because I refuse to believe that anyone could be this stupid. Such is my faith in humanity and its innate decency and propensity for logical thinking.

Dogs eat grass too...

[Clueless Nick]

When they need to - yechch...!

In other news

[Centurix]

Dinosaurs 'chewed' grass. Entire dinosaur population killed while driving 5mph to the nearest corner store to buy munchies.

Digesting grass is hard

[Spy Handler]

is it not? Cows have like, 4 stomachs (or something... i didn't do good in biology)

Do they even know how many stomachs dinos had?

Re:Digesting grass is hard

[sigzero]

They had as many as the scientists "say" they had since the majority of what they "say" is pure conjecture anyway.

Re:Digesting grass is hard

[Reziac]

Horses have only "simple stomachs" and they eat grass. However, they're very inefficient compared to ruminants (cows, sheep) with their compound stomachs, where cud chewing (barf it up and rechew it later) and heftier bacteria do the actual work.

If you compare horseshit and bullshit.. er, I mean horse manure and cow manure, the difference is obvious. Horse manure comes out not much different than the grass went in, other than being coarsely ground by the horse chewing on it -- but you can still tell it was grass (and even what kind of grass or other feed it was). Cow manure comes out semi-liquified, with the fibres much more thoroughly broken up and anonymized.

Elephants are also grazers (grass-eaters; vs. browsers ie. shrub-eaters like sheep and goats), tho offhand I don't recall which stomach system they have.

Re:Digesting grass is hard

[bobcave]

Sounds like English wasn't your strong suit, either.

Re:Digesting grass is hard

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. Not sauropods, anyway. But some of these plant-eating dinosaurs did have a gizzard-like structure full of stones, presumably used to crush/grind the food in their stomachs (these sauropods did not have the right type of teeth for grinding food -- they just collected the food and swallowed)). Some of these "stomach stones" (called gastroliths) are as big as your fist, and the whole collection from one sauropod dinosaur would fill a good-sized bucket. So, imagine a king-sized, four-legged, plant-eating turkey with gravel in its gizzard instead of sand. Other than the fact that a gizzard-like structure was present, and that the system must have been big, the nature of the rest of the digestive system in sauropods is speculative. Although soft tissues do sometimes get preserved as fossils, that hasn't been the case for any sauropods.

Ahh just in time for Thanksgiving

[novus ordo]

I have to take a giant coprolite!

Re:Ahh just in time for Thanksgiving

[Anonymous Coward]

coprolite (kp'r-lt')
n.
Fossilized excrement.

If you're shitting out coprolites I'd hate to be your digestive track :)

Re:From the makers of Global Warming Theory comes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, what an idiot.

Event Horizon

[p0]

WTF? Where is Event Horizon?!!

Does this mean that...

[p0]

... if one found a pube stuck in his teeth, we can call it evidence that humans grazed on hair?

Re:Does this mean that...

[red_kenotic]

... You strange man.

That would probably go to prove that man, certain kinds - shouldn't be allowed to roam freely.

what does it mean?

[Pliep]

From reading TFA, I think this only tells us something about grass, less about dinosaurs. The grass that was found in dung indicates the grass existed and was eaten in the period the dinosaur lived.

BUT... does that mean all of the species ate grass? Couldn't this be just the one, or perhaps a few individuals that, say, accidentally ate some grass for some reason, like "mad-dino's-disease"?

It wasn't a herbivore they ate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe that titosaurus just got done eating a beaver which had ate the grass?

Re:Slashdot Logic --My Cat

[DarkOx]

My cat will sometimes eat grass as well but I think it would hardly be fair to say he is a grazing animal.

Now that's a Hindu Dinosaur

[TarrySingh]

Pure Vegitarian!

Re:From the makers of Global Warming Theory comes.

[pnewhook]

Millions of years from now they'll be researching Redneckus Fundamentalus Americanus. They'll discover that they died out because literally, they were born with shit for brains.

T-Rex

[Council]

The weird thing is that the dinosaur in question found to eat grass was the T-Rex, deeply confusing both sides in the "vicious hunter or cowardly scavenger" argument.

Another idea

[musakko]

Maybe they were like dogs, and they just chewed on grass when they were sick.. Or is that cats? I can't remember now

3 dinosaurs are mentioned in the Bible

[Johnny Mozzarella]

Actually, three dinosaurs are mentioned in the Bible.
Tanniyn -usually translated serpent or dragon
Behemoth - description similar to a Brontosaurus (Job 40)
Levyathan - large sea serpent (Job 41)

Re:3 dinosaurs are mentioned in the Bible

[Conanymous Award]

To enlighten your creationist mind: there were no aquatic dinosaurs.

Biblical accounts on fabled creatures are as valid information as old tales about unicorns and such.

Re:3 dinosaurs are mentioned in the Bible

[Anonymous Coward]

What about biblical accounts of unicorns? I believe they are mentioned 7 times.

Re:3 dinosaurs are mentioned in the Bible

[Anonymous Coward]

The English word unicorn, which is derived from the Latin words meaning one horn, was used by the King James translators (and others) for the original Hebrew word of the Scriptures, pronounced reh-ame, which means a wild bull. The best-known "unicorn" of the animal world, at least in the modern era, is the rhinoceros - a very strong, single-horned animal that seems to fit the literal description of the Biblical unicorn (see below) as a powerful wild animal that was not easily domesticated (although it's quite likely that it was some other animal that existed at that time - the rhinoceros is used merely as an example to illustrate that powerful one-horned animals did, and do, exist). "Unicorn" is also used symbolically, the one "horn" of Joseph consisting of the two single, or independent, "horns" of his sons, Ephraim and Manasseh.

Also note that what a lot of people complain that is "wrong" with the bible comes from gross inacuracies of the King James bible, read about it on bible.org article 665 and 663 IIRC. The person in charge of making a translation used about half a dozen of writings and filled in the rest from latin and made up some things. By far, NIV (new international version) is the best transaltion, consult it.

Re:More support for the Bible

[Bazzalisk]

They do have puny tails, but Hippos are tubs of muscle, not fat.

A Hippo can kill a man quite easily (and it's not that uncommon).

To be honest the descriptiopn of Behemoth could just as easily be talking about a Red Kangaroo, a Giant Ground Sloth, a Mammoth, or any one of hundreds of other large and powerful extinct (or indeed still extant) mamalian creatures known to have coexisted with early man.

Or it could have been a myth, a metaphore, a mistranslation, an urban-legend, or somebodies drug-induced hallucination after eating too much ergotic rye.

Could be any damned thing.

Re:More support for the Bible

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I found the article you seem to be referencing here:
http://www.christiananswers.net/dinosaurs/j-extinc t3.html

Too bad Noah forgot to bring a pair of T-Rex on the boat. Idiot.

Mistake in summary

[Wylfing]

a team of researchers found evidence in India that dinosaurs ate grass

Excuse me, I think you meant to say our Intelligent Designer made it look like there were dinosaurs who ate grass. Sheesh. Didn't any of you attend science class?

Why didn't they know grass existed then?

[John Jorsett]

How is it that they can find fossilized dung from the era, but not fossilized grass? Why would grass be exempt from fossilization when a lot of other stuff apparently isn't? Just wondering.

Re:More support for the Bible

[TheLink]

Well I'm a christian, and I think that christians should focus on spreading a more important message, than spend too much time on rather debateable points, especially things that don't actually form the foundation of the Christian faith (e.g. Jesus).

If you believe in the behemoth being a dinosaur in the long term it gains you very little even if it is true. Whereas the whole point of Christianity is that believing in Jesus gains you a lot.

In all the hot air from the intelligent design, creationist, evolution parties, was there much really to do with Christianity? Did it help spread the Good News? Was it a blessing to other people?

Instead of wasting so much time in debates like whether we are descended from apes or not, maybe we should ponder whether we really are behaving like God's children or not.

Now if the debate was on whether Jesus died and was resurrected or not, that would be an important doctrinal and core issue, and one worth defending.

Re:More support for the Bible

[walmartshopper]

I definitely understand your point. I realize that whether the Behemoth was a dinosaur or not is not crucial to Christianity. I know that Christianity rests on the truth of the death and resurrection of Christ, and that believing a certain theory about our origins does not make or break the deal. BUT, I still believe that it does help spread the Good News and is worth defending. The main reason is that evolution is a common objection to Christianity and a major roadblock for many people to become believers. There are many people who don't believe in God because they think that all the creatures on the earth evolved naturally, and that God is just an alternate explanation for the uninformed. Our kids go through school learning that evolution is the only reasonable explanation for where we came from. And as a result, many of them decide that God does not exist and that life is ultimately meaningless. For example, author Lee Strobel grew up learning that evolution was true, and became agnostic. Eventually he became a believer in Christ... but only after he investigated evolution vs. creation and became convinced that creation was the better theory. You would be surprised how many people don't believe in God because they hold to evolution. So I thoroughly believe that somebody needs to stand up for creation.

I think you have to look at it from both sides. If you're already a believer, then these debates are not crucial to you. But let's look at it from the other side. Many people won't listen to you preach about Christ unless you answer their questions about evolution and creation.

Re:More support for the Bible

[Derek Pomery]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behemoth

The use of tail as euphemism for a penis makes sense.
I also like the elephant hypotheis.

Easier to believe than some bizaare theory about dinosaurs living up to present age.

Further confirmation of Genesis

[DoubleWhopper]

Ge 1:30 - "And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground -- everything that has the breath of life in it -- I give every green plant for food." And it was so.

Just a little stab at those who claim (foolishly) that dinosaurs only ate each other.

Re:Further confirmation of Genesis

[Daniel Dvorkin]

No one has ever claimed that dinosaurs only ate each other.

Re:Further confirmation of Genesis

[geekoid]

Who the hell claimes that?
.
.
.
Oh wait, your a moron. PLease return to your TV

Re:More support for the Bible

[walmartshopper]

It's really not a bizaare theory at all, although it may seem like it compared to the traditional theory that they were extinct long before humans. There have been blood cells found in dinosaur bones that were not completely fossilized. (link) If you factor in a global flood a few thousand years ago, then the theory makes a lot of sense. I challenge you to read some or all of the articles here.

All dinosaurs were vegetarians

[patiodragon]

They only killed each other when one stole the other's Cheetos.

Re: More support for the Bible

[Black Parrot]

> The use of tail as euphemism for a penis makes sense.

Especially since 'penis' is Latin for 'tail'.

I.e., 'penis' itself is a euphemism.

Re: More support for the Bible

[Black Parrot]

> Too bad Noah forgot to bring a pair of T-Rex on the boat. Idiot.

He did, but fed them to the lions when he realized he didn't pack enough food.

Re: More support for the Bible

[walmartshopper]

I use the English Standard Version because it is a word-for-word, literal translation from the original language. In this case, it was translated directly from Hebrew to English. If it was translated from Hebrew to English as "tail," why would it matter what the Latin word for tail was?

Dialog

[roman_mir]

First Dinosaur: -Yo, man, look at this great grass, let's eat it.
Second Dinosaur: -Oh, yeah, last time I had that stuff I felt weird, man, my paws became huge and for the whole day after that I was just sitting there, thinking about the meaning of existance. It was brilliant!
F.D.: -Dude, that's some GOOD shit.
COP Dinosaur: -Station, this is patrol 69, I've got a couple of junkie-sauruses here, send backup.

Yes but...

[Kroc]

Yes, but did they do algebra?

Re:Yes but...

[chawly]

No, but they used linux to get it done

Re:More support for the Bible

[Derek Pomery]

*sigh*
Two can play the link game.
Only mine aren't wild exaggerations of recent and perfectly valid science.
(i.e. - no it wasn't red blood cells found. someone lied to you. And I was reading attempted explanations of geology based on a global flood before the world wide web. the pseudoscience hasn't changed, which saves a lot of time on the repeated debunkings)

Let's see now...
http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/

Red blood cells. That'd be under paleontology (http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html#CC)

A stupid misreading of a recent discovery. Ah. Here we go.
http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC371.html

And I don't pretend to know or care which particular flood claims you find so attractive, but we'll just go with the entire Geology section with attempts to explain complicated geological processes like the Geological Column using simple Sedimentation mixing (read those sections).
http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html#CD

The fact is, is that the lies are much simpler to understand than the complicated processes of how this world works.
Shame, really. In my opinion, why shrink and belittle the world and its history?
Doesn't that shrink and belittle any Creator?

Re:More support for the Bible

[walmartshopper]

In the context, God is demonstrating His power to Job through the creatures He made. The Leviathan is described in chapter 41 as a creature with airtight "shields" on his back that cannot be pierced by sword or spear. God says of him in v.33, "On earth there is not his like, a creature without fear." Assuming that dinosaurs were present, it makes more sense that God would use a large dinosaur along with Leviathan to display his power, rather than Leviathan with a hippo, or even an elephant.

Re:More support for the Bible

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, my nonbelief in gods has nothing to do with evolution and everything to do with skepticism. Even if evolution were disproven that would not be a license to start believing in Gods for which there is no plausible evidence.

Re:From the makers of Global Warming Theory comes.

[Anonymous Coward]

(note: substitute the "leftie"s and "rightie"s with the appropriate sides of whatever duality seems to fit your tastes best)

I interpret it as: a political leftie pretending to be a political rightie trolling political lefties by sounding like a really stupid political leftie berating political righties.

Or: A rightie doing a shitty job of pretending to be an evil leftie.

Or something like that. Either way, not original, barely amusing, and all in all, I expect more from Slashdot's trolls than "worship us you stupid republicans!!!"

-1, Mediocre (yeah, I do wish)

So what?

[Ernesto Alvarez]

That's nothing.

There's evidence of grass consumption by various species of dinosaurs in north america. I'm not sure they eat it, though.

Re:More support for the Bible

[TheLink]

I believe in God, I believe he is the Creator and I believe evolution is more likely than stuff springing into existence in six consecutive 24 hour days. It would seem unlike his chosen style of operation for this universe[1], but whether or not I am right about that shouldn't be that important.

However, I must say it is not wise to require people to believe in creationism in order to be a Christian. There are only a few requirements to be a Christian. One must not like those Pharisees Jesus rebuked for putting extra requirements and burdens on the rest of the people of Israel.

[1] If it were his style that it is normal for things to occur "just like that", then why are people needed to spread the Gospel? He could very have things done instantly or over 6 days. But no, he has chosen to do things differently.

When Jesus turned water into wine at the wedding, he could have just created wine jars full of wine out of nothing. But instead of that, he asked people to bring stone jars, fill them with water, and only then he turned the water into wine. He allowed people to participate in the working of the miracle.

Same for when Jesus fed the thousands. There was a boy who donated his food first. Was that necessary? I guess not, if the objective is to just feed the _stomachs_ of the thousands. But maybe yes, if the objective is something else.

Would an all powerful God really need us to do things for him? No. But in his grace and wisdom he has chosen to allow us to participate.

I believe it is more likely that the 6 days of creation are figurative/symbolic.

Lastly, if God really rested on the 7th day and "rested from all his work", and he is still working miracles and answering our prayers, then what "day" is it now? But don't forget - Jesus healed on the Sabbath (which is the 7th day), and the Pharisees rebuked Jesus for that. So which "day" is it now?

I don't have an answer for that, but I think it's worth thinking about.

inconclusive.

[bmgz]

So they found grass in a dinosaurs stomach. Is this evidence that they lived solely on grass? or even that they used grass as a food source? I think for the timebeing they just found grass in a fossilised dinosaurs stomach..

Re:More support for the Bible

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems to me that the requirements to be a Christian are pretty simple - monothiesm and a belief in Jesus of Nazaruth as the savior. The rest just subdivides. If someone can't accept both Christ and Science, perhaps their understanding of one, the other, or both is overly narrow.

the evidence they got in India is that ...

[porky_pig_jr]

dinosaurs ate cows. But of course, since it's India, that evidence was suppressed.

Re:the evidence they got in India is that ...

[chawly]

Yes, surely, but they also ate grass. You need to think about sports. There were no lawn mowers in those days. Grass eating dinosaurs were the only way to keep the cricket pitch in order.

Re: More support for the Bible

[Anonymous Coward]

If you knew anything about translation, you would know that word-for-word and literal are not synonymous: often times a word-for-word translation greatly distorts the meaning of the original text.

Adapt?

[the_skywise]

Obviously the grass didn't adapt well enough if it was inside the belly of the Dinosaur!

Now grass that defends itself! There's an adaptation!

Idiot - And Rightly So

[Anonymous Coward]

Cannabis and Hops ?

Good gracious !

The dinousaurs were getting stoned and then soused on beer !

No wonder they were sluggish, large, and eventually died out.

Except for those few who only chewed on it for medicinal purposes, of course.

Silly

[timbudtwo]

Further evidence that, just as darwin said just before he died, evolution is false. I like the cleverly worded article though, as to be careful not to bash on the integrity of the theory.

What is a Plesiosaur?

[Johnny Mozzarella]

http://www.geocities.com/sea_saur/images.html

Re:What is a Plesiosaur?

[Conanymous Award]

A plesiosaur is a plesiosaur and a dinosaur is a dinosaur. Just like a primate is a primate and a rodent is a rodent.

Re: More support for the Bible

[millennial]

I dare you to translate the following Spanish sentence into English:
Me tienes por el pelo!
I'll tell you how accurate you were.

Re:More support for the Bible

[millennial]

Evolution is NOT an objection to Christianity. It is an objection to fundamentalism and the irrational denial of Biblical interpretation. Kids are never taught that evolution is the ONLY option, just that it is the one best supported by falsifiable scientific evidence.

Life is not meaningless without God. If it was, we would have no happy atheists.

Lee Strobel became a Christian not because of an examination of creationism, but after interviewing several prominent religious figures and coming to understand WHY they believed what they believed.

You don't need to "stand up" for creationism. The freakin' PRESIDENT already is.

Mod this down as Dis-informative

[Withershins]

The real point, as missed in this message, is that grass existed at the time of the dinos--as was not believed before.

Dinosaurs aren't really reptiles.

[AJWM]

Certainly not in the sense that most people think of reptiles (snakes, lizards, etc). To say dinosaurs are (or rather, were) reptiles, you might as well also say that birds are reptiles and even that mammals are reptiles (descended, as they are, from mammal-like reptiles like cynognathus or dimetrodon, and indeed monotreme mammals still lay eggs).

Indeed "dinosaur" itself is a rather vague catchall term, meaning anything from "any Jurrasic to Cretaceous animal not obviously a fish, bird or mammal" to its more technically correct meaning "a member of the order Ornithischia or Saurischia, and certainly excluding pterosaurs or pleisiosaurs".

Alas, we're pretty much stuck with the imprecise terminology that was first popularized. Consider how surprising the article would be if the title were "Grass Grazing in Therapods Confirmed", vs the more accurate (given TFA's contents) "Grass Grazing in Sauropods Confirmed".
If they'd found grass in Tyrannosaur droppings, I'd be amazed! (As it is, evidence of late Cretaceous grass is still surprising, conventional wisdom is that grasses arose in the Tertiary.)

Re:Dinosaurs aren't really reptiles.

[Conanymous Award]

Thank you, I'm a paleontologist and I like formal terms. ;) Taxonomically, dinosaurs are reptiles, and the scientific definition of a dinosaur is "a reptile of the order Ornitischia or Saurischia". People used to think of whales as fish, since whales aren't mammals in the sense most people thought of mammals (cats, dogs, horses etc.).

'Dinosaur' is an informal "vague catchall term" for laymen, who don't see a difference between a plesiosaur and a pterosaur, but let's stick to the scientific definition, shall we? What wouldn't make dinosaurs retiles is beyond me. And technically speaking birds are indeed dinosaurs and thus reptiles. Mammals, on the other hand, have such novel physiological (and one could even say psychological) characteristics that not even cladists claim them to be reptiles, although mammals certainly are descended from them.

Re:Dinosaurs aren't really reptiles.

[AJWM]

If you consider birds to be (even if via dinosaurs) reptiles, then clearly such minor physiological characteristics as endothermy vs exothermy don't enter into it. Sure, if you're just going by the number and location of holes in the skull, then dinosaurs (and thus birds) are reptiles.

But to most people -- and granted it's a lay definition -- a reptile isn't determined by the makeup of its skull but by being a vertebrate that is (a) cold blooded, (b) egg-laying and (c) more or less scaley (no hair or feathers). (And differentiated from amphibians by not having an aquatic stage or by laying eggs on land). Birds certainly don't qualify under (a) or (c), and it's becoming more clear that many -- perhaps most -- dinosaurs didn't qualify under (a) and some not under (c) either.

No doubt much of the resistance to the latter ideas is due to calling dinosaurs "reptiles" and the consequent image of a dinosaur as a rather large but yet cold-blooded scaley (or at least, featherless) beast. This masks (in popular perception) the gradual transition of vertebrate species over the last couple of hundred million years -- there's a perceived "giant lizards to sparrows and pigeons" transition at the K-T boundary, which makes evolution harder to grasp.

(I'm no paleontologist myself, although I spent many hours amongst the collections of the ROM in Toronto as a kid. One of my 7 year old boys has wanted to be a paleontologist since about age four, and can probably recognize more dinosaur species than I can. He refers to the local Denver Museum of Nature and Science as "the dinosaur museum".)

Also in 'Nature' ...

[RockDoctor]

There's also a write-up on this available online at 'Nature' http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051114/full/051114 -13.html
It raises informative points which the interested amateur may do well to note.

To address point's raised in the discussion:
Although grasses are dominant in habitats across the world today, they weren't thought to exist until some ten million years after the age of dinosaurs had ended.
A significant change in the "first appearence" horizon of the grasses. Despite the parody that creationists present, real-world geologists (and palynologists in particular) are much more precise in the language they use. "Date of first appearence in the fossil record" is a concept that rapidly gets abbreviated in the popular press to "date of origin", but the two concepts are very distinct. Unfortunately, this gives unscrupulous people an opportunity to claim there is more dispute in the science of harth history than there actually is. There are disputes, but within the profession they're nowhere near as significant as the unscrupulous protray them to be.

The team collected 65-million-year-old droppings from the volcanic Deccan Traps of central India in order to study the diet of titanosaurs, the group of super-size dinosaurs that includes Diplodocus.
The discovery of the coprolites between lava/ tuff deposits of the Deccan traps illuminates the "was it the asteroid at Chixulub or was it the Deccan eruptions" debate. There have long been people who used evidence like this to argue that the Chixulub impactor was not the only factor. Also, since the Deccan volcanicity was going on before the Chixulub impactor, the "Chixulub caused Deccan" arguement has never had appreciable support in the profession. (Note - Diplodocus was extinct long before this, though it's descendents or relatives were still around.)

Now it seems that dinosaurs or other early mammals may have been the early grazers that gave grass a head start. Dinosaurs probably contributed minimally to this, Stromberg says: they mainly had the wrong kind of teeth for ripping up grass, and the titanosaur coprolites indicate that grass was only a small part of their diet.
RTFA is as over-used and under heard phrase as RTFM used to be.

(Note 2 - I should update my signature line to include the "FGS".)

Why grasses are special

[TA]

What's special about grasses is that grass grow from the bottom, while most if not all other plants have the grow-point at the tip. This means that grass will survive and trive with gracing. If you grace on any other plant you'll eat off the grow point. Grasses evolved because of extreme gracing pressure. The first plant that had its growing point at the root instead of at the tip got a tremendous advantage and the new species would spread around like, er, grass.

Re:More support for the Bible

[Anonymous Coward]

Life is not meaningless without God. If it was, we would have no happy atheists.

Being happy doesn't necessarily indicate that your life has meaning (or purpose). Where does meaning come from? If there's no God, then we're all just random occurrences and our lives can't possibly have any meaning. You can create a purpose for your life, but this is not the purpose for your life (again, because you have none without God). On the other hand, if a loving God chose to create you (and me and everyone else), then he probably had a reason for doing so.

Re:More support for the Bible

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I'm a christian, and I think that christians should focus on spreading a more important message, than spend too much time on rather debateable points, especially things that don't actually form the foundation of the Christian faith (e.g. Jesus).

I too am a Christian, but one of those wacko fundie types. :-) While I agree that a belief in creationism is not a requirement to be saved, nor should it be the focus of our efforts of salvation, it is important to keep in mind that for many Christians, what they learn about evolution causes them to doubt the reliability of the Bible and therefore their faith. That's why groups like Answers in Genesis make Biblical authority, not creationism (despite what some might try to have you believe), their main point. Please see this article if you're interested in learning more:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/1866.asp

Re:More support for the Bible

[millennial]

People can find meaning in many things other than God. The pursuit of intellectual improvement, the building of a loving family, the accumulation of financial wealth, the search for inner peace; all of these things can be done without God, and can give meaning to life.
Your statement that we have no purpose without God is based on a belief in God. You ONLY believe this because you believe in God. An atheist would not believe this, and knows that there are other ways.

Grass grows from the root. Mod parent up.

[RedCard]

What's special about grasses is that grass grow from the bottom, while most if not all other plants have the grow-point at the tip. This means that grass will survive and trive with gracing. If you grace on any other plant you'll eat off the grow point. Grasses evolved because of extreme gracing pressure. The first plant that had its growing point at the root instead of at the tip got a tremendous advantage and the new species would spread around like, er, grass.

Mod parent up! This is exactly right, but you beat me to it. It makes perfect sense for grass to evolve under grazing pressure, and I don't see how large herds of grazers could exist for more than a very short while if it weren't for a resilient, bottom-growing plant like grass.

You missed me among your potential audience

[ianscot]

If you're already a believer, then these debates are not crucial to you. But let's look at it from the other side. Many people won't listen to you preach about Christ unless you answer their questions about evolution and creation.

You're missing the boat with both me (as a potential convert) and the fundamentalist point of view represented by dogged literalism with respect to Genesis.

The core teachings of Christ, or at least those that haven't been perverted by the doctrinal machinations of two millenia of Pharisees, appeal to me. I could not possibly care less for the assertion that, because the Bible has to be the word of God with no allowances for the superficiality of mortal understanding, rabbits chew their cud and people were created as literal dust into which God breathed. That's a beautifully poetic image, the breath of God, but its literal truth doesn't do thing one for me and my attempts to lead a moral life.

Meanwhile the fundamentalist world thinks those things are far more crucial than Christ's teachings about what it means to be a child of God. The reason is simple: they claim to know God absolutely, and to have certain moral authority as a result. To keep their worldly authority, they need to buttress their claim to the Bible's literal truth. They claim God's righteous power, and don't want anyone to question their claim. So they defend frankly idiotic positions through tortuous intellectual constructions, as an act of irrational self-defense.

Fundamentalism is about authority, not about morality. It has jack squat to do with Jesus's teachings; if anything fundamentalists seem to me to worship him as an idol, or as an authority figure who has the power to grant them everlasting life in exchange for worship. They see their own petty authoritarian dreams projected onto Jesus, rather than caring a whit for what the guy stood for... Which coincidentally wasn't anything like what fundamentalism claims in his name.

Jesus would probably scorn his most ardent admirers in today's world. They worship him rather than taking his message into their hearts, and spend their souls on foolish attempts to hold onto their own worldly power. Again -- Pharisees, who think they cross the right ritual Ts and worship the right people, and therefore merit salvation.

Re:Grass grows from the root. Mod parent up.

[CriminalNerd]

I don't see how large herds of grazers could exist for more than a very short while if it weren't for a resilient, bottom-growing plant like grass.

I'm surprised that an intelligent design didn't attack this part of the thread yet.

Re:Grass grows from the root. Mod parent up.

[RedCard]

I'm surprised that an intelligent design didn't attack this part of the thread yet.

If they did, I would just refer them to this link: Is God an Accident? and direct them to pay special attention to section V, which is entitled "We've Evolved to be Creationists".

Now that would really cause ballistics.