December 22, 2016
By comparing the fossilized
remains of 13 ceratosaurian theropod dinosaurs known as Limusaurus
inextricabilis collected from the Upper Jurassic Shishugou Formation of
northwestern China, researchers have been able to reconstruct the dinosaur's
growth and development from a young hatchling of less than a year to the age of
10. The findings, reported in Current Biology on December 22,
uncovered something unexpected: the dinosaurs had teeth as young juveniles that
were gradually lost as they grew up.
"We found a very rare, very
interesting phenomenon in a ceratosaurian dinosaur whereby toothed jaws in
juvenile individuals transition to a completely toothless beaked jaw in more
mature individuals during development," says Shuo Wang of Capital Normal
University in Beijing, China.
The findings make Limusaurus the
first known reptile with the characteristic known as ontogenetic edentulism
(meaning tooth reduction or loss in development). Together with other evidence,
they led the researchers to conclude that the toothed juveniles were probably
omnivorous meat-eaters. The beaked adults most likely transitioned to a
plant-based diet.
Wang and colleagues first
reported on this ceratosaurian back in 2001. At that point, they had collected
just one fossilized juvenile, and they didn't yet know what it was. Over the
course of the next several years, more specimens were found. But it wasn't
clear that they all belonged to the same species.
"Initially, we believed that
we found two different ceratosaurian dinosaurs from the Wucaiwan Area, one
toothed and the other toothless, and we even started to describe them
separately," Wang says.
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