Diet Changed Dinosaur's Head Shape

March 31, 2010
Imagine if the shape of your head changed with the foods that you ate. That's what a team of paleontologists now thinks happened to the long-necked sauropod dinosaur, Diplodocus, which also was one of the least intelligent dinosaurs. Its head might have been interesting, in terms of shape, but previous studies suggest there wasn't a lot of brain power in it. But, as for all animals, it evolved what it needed for survival.

Diplodocus was a huge, hefty dinosaur that lived towards the end of the Jurassic Period around 150 million years ago in North America

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Carnegie Museum of Natural History Assistant Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology Matthew Lamanna and colleagues made the determination after analyzing the skull of a juvenile Diplodocus that was recently rediscovered in the museum's collections. The researchers were surprised that this head was so different from that of adults of the same species.

news.discovery.com...

You can see the juvenile Diplodocus skull, as well as a fully restored mounted skeleton of this same species in the
Dinosaur's In Time Exibition

Dinosaurs in Their Time is the first permanent exhibit in the world to feature scientifically accurate, immersive environments spanning the Mesozoic Era—the Age of Dinosaurs—arranged chronologically and filled with actively posed original fossil specimens. See dinosaurs like they haven’t been seen in 66 million years!

Dinosours's in Time website is amazing, take the time to look it over, their creatures are beautiful.

reply to post by Aquarius1

The juveniles of many species have larger eyes relative to the rest of the head than adults, but we don't infer that that's because the juveniles need to see better, right?

So while I believe that the juveniles have a different skull shape as they claim, I find their argument that it's necessarily related to diet very unconvincing. Perhaps it is, perhaps not.

Hiya, this is already happening in humans with our 3rd molars, something about mouths shrinking due to mushier foods. Its my (personal )belief that impacted molars started when humans started consuming milk from other animals well after adolescence. I was just reading about Magdalenian Girl last night because i need my own wisdom teeth, she has the oldest known set of impacted wisdom teeth.