Meat-o-saurus becomes veg-o-saurus
5 May 2005
by Richard Conan-Davies
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Working in the Utah desert, paleontologists have uncovered a mass of fossil dinosaurs that initially looked like a meat eater type but has features that suggest it could have fed on both plants and meat. The fossilised creature called Falcarius utahensis could be a common ancestor to unusual feather dinosaurs that have an odd similiarity to giant kiwi birds. James Kirkland the leader of the study from Utah state Geological Survey explained that "Falcarius shows the beginning of features we associate with plant-eating dinosaurs, including a reduction in size of meat-cutting teeth to leaf-shredding teeth, the expansion of the gut to a size needed to ferment plants, and the early stages of changing the legs so they could carry a bulky body instead of running fast after prey." Kirkland further explained that "This little beast is a missing link between small-bodied predatory dinosaurs and the highly specialized and bizarre plant-eating therizinosaurs." |
 Artist impression of Falcarius, the omnivorous dinosaur
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Related Links
Original News release from Univeristy of Utah
Information and pictures of therizinosaurs
Nature & Science News
ClearlyExplained.com