Overview
- Using tooth-wear patterns, stable isotopes, fossil stomach contents, body-size estimates and ecological software, researchers mapped more than 12,000 feeding links from the Morrison Formation’s Dry Mesa Quarry.
- The model indicates that baby and young juvenile sauropods provided a major food source for top theropods such as Allosaurus and Torvosaurus, with vulnerability tied to foot-wide eggs and likely limited parental care.
- Dry Mesa preserves at least six sauropod species alongside several large predators in a drought-associated deposit that accumulated over up to about 10,000 years.
- Sauropods displayed far more connections to plants and consumers than other herbivores like ornithischians, supporting their role as keystone components of this Late Jurassic ecosystem.
- The authors propose that fewer juvenile sauropods in later Cretaceous ecosystems may have driven adaptations in predators such as T. rex, including stronger bite force and enhanced vision.