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Jeff Hecht, NewScientist.com
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Palaeontologists have caught a cousin of the carnivorous Velociraptor in the process of turning vegetarian. Named Falcarius utahensis, it resembled its predatory meat-eating ancestors, but evolved teeth shaped for shredding leaves and a paunchy gut to digest plant material.
Jim Kirkland, state palaeontologist at the Utah Geological Survey, US, and colleagues unearthed a mass graveyard containing some 2000 identifiable bones in a Utah dig, of which 99% were from Falcarius of all ages.
The wide range of bones will allow researchers to study their growth patterns and individual variation - something rarely possible in palaeontology - says Lindsay Zanno at the University of Utah. Kirkland says the dinosaurs had gathered around a spring when they died. He suggests they may have been the victims of mass poisoning by bacteria or bad water.
Crucially, the discovery offers critical insight into one of the most poorly understood groups of dinosaurs, the plant-eating Therizinosaurs - which evolved from meat-eaters...
Jim Kirkland, state palaeontologist at the Utah Geological Survey, US, and colleagues unearthed a mass graveyard containing some 2000 identifiable bones in a Utah dig, of which 99% were from Falcarius of all ages.
The wide range of bones will allow researchers to study their growth patterns and individual variation - something rarely possible in palaeontology - says Lindsay Zanno at the University of Utah. Kirkland says the dinosaurs had gathered around a spring when they died. He suggests they may have been the victims of mass poisoning by bacteria or bad water.
Crucially, the discovery offers critical insight into one of the most poorly understood groups of dinosaurs, the plant-eating Therizinosaurs - which evolved from meat-eaters...
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