By Laura Geggel, Senior
Writer | September 21, 2017 09:26am ET
Certain giant, herbivorous
dinosaurs didn't eat just plants — they also chowed down on rotten logs
harboring shellfish, a new study finds.
Researchers made this startling
dietary discovery after examining 10 different specimens of fossilized dinosaur
dung, known as coprolites, from the Kaiparowits Formation of Grand
Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah.
"If we had found just one
coprolite with crustacean pieces in it, that would have been interesting,"
said study lead researcher Karen Chin, an associate professor and a curator of
paleontology at the University of Colorado Boulder. "But the fact that we
found coprolites that spread out over at least 20 kilometers [12 miles] at
different stratigraphic levels — that really strengthens our evidence for this
being a behavior that these dinosaurs engaged in."
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