Meat-Eating Dinosaurs Not So Carnivorous After All

Tyrannosaurus rex may have been a flesh-eating terror but many of his closest relatives were more content with vegetarian fare, a new analysis by Field Museum scientists has found. The scientists, Lindsay Zanno and Peter Makovicky, who will publish their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, used statistical analyses to determine the diet of 90 species of theropod dinosaurs... Read More

New research by Field Museum scientists finds widespread herbivory in bird-like theropod dinosaurs. Four of the 90-theropod species involved in the study shown with dietary interpretations. All four species derive from the famous feathered dinosaur beds of the Early Cretaceous Yixian Formation, P. R. China, leading the scientists to speculate that dietary diversity may have contributed to the large numbers of contemporaneous theropods in ecosystems like those of the Yixian. (Credit: Dennis Finnin and Roderick Mickens, copyright American Museum of Natural History)