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Anatosauridae

It is curious that science may sometimes indicate us with certainty a lot of things about ancient diets, and we are not talking now about what our grandparents used to have for dinner, but about diets that no one followed for the past seventy million years, since the late Cretaceous period.

Indeed, we are not talking about your family's diet, neither the one any hero of history followed; we are not even talking about human diets because at that time, only small mammals roamed the planet. That was the age of dinosaurs, shortly before it came to an end due to the K-T event, the disaster that caused mass extinctions on a global scale, including all sorts of dinosaurs with the exception of birds, which evolved directly from them.

Some years ago palaeontology had one of its best moments when the complete fossil remains of an Anatosaurus was found. This particular fossil is remarkable in every sense, because vent remains of the skin and internal organs, including the stomach, were imprinted in stone. Finding fairly complete fossils is rare, but to find one with such characteristics is truly exceptional because it is highly unlikely that soft organic tissue will fossilise.

Anatosaurii are called colloquially 'Duck dinosaurs' because their bills and cranial characteristics resemble those of ducks; it was even thought that the lifestyle of these hadrosaurids was somewhat similar to that of modern ducks, except flying. Hadrosaurids were quite abundant in what is now North America and Asia; Anatosaurii were one kind of Hadrosaurids that was found in Alberta, Canada, New Jersey and Montana in the United States.

Their evolution, biology and habits are fairly well known, but it was suspected that they found their food mainly near water streams and ate algae, for the most part. However, the contents of the stomach of this particular Anatosaurus showed that they actually fed themselves from plants found in forests and plains quite away from any sort of water stream, lake or river: its diet included pine needles, seeds of various sorts and other small plants.

It is also evident that this particular animal died suddenly, and probably was not ill: instinct forbids ill or weak animals from eating anything. It is also unlikely that the animal ate something toxic, or a natural poison; in general, if a carcass is to become a fossil, all bacteria which may decompose it should be quickly removed, and this is the kind of circumstances in situations such as a landslide, which would bury the animal fairly quickly and with no contact with the atmosphere.

There are many conjectures going on about this, but the certain thing is that the Anatosaurids were generally well nourished. We are a bit late to say 'Bon Appetit', but it is better later than never!

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Please review further information and references at Andinia.com. You can also get in touch with Don Pablo Edronkin directly to learn more and exchange views about these topics.

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