Sauropod tooth wear reveals climate-driven diets and potential seasonal migration.
What did sauropods eat, and how far did they travel to meet their enormous food demands? An international team of researchers has reconstructed the feeding behavior of these long-necked dinosaurs by applying advanced dental wear analysis. Their study, published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, shows that microscopic wear patterns on tooth enamel can reveal unexpected details about migration, climate influences, and how different species shared ecological niches 150 million years ago.
Life during the Jurassic raises many questions: what did these giant herbivores consume, how did they coexist within the same environments, and did they perhaps move seasonally in search of food? These issues were examined by a team led by Dr. Daniela E. Winkler of Kiel University, Dr. Emanuel Tschopp of Freie Universität Berlin and the LIB, and André Saleiro of NOVA University Lisbon. Their approach relied on a novel source of evidence—microscopic traces on fossilized teeth that act as a record of feeding habits.
“I still find it fascinating that microscopic scratches on fossil teeth can tell us so much about diet and even behavior,” says Winkler, an expert in the applied methodology. The technique, known as Dental Microwear Texture Analysis (DMTA), was originally developed by a research group led by LIB scientist Professor Thomas Kaiser for studying mammals. The current study, published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, marks the first systematic application of the method to sauropods. The analyses were carried out in the laboratories of the LIB.
