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Re: [dinosaur] Liaoningosaurus ate fish (!!??)



"After all, finding a gar in the belly of a hadrosaur is not evidence of 
piscivory in duckbills!"

Any large animal that wades in still waters will be presented with 'silt-stunned' fish, floating belly-up, and within easy reach - assuming there are fine sediments there to be disturbed and suspended in the water column, and fish present...

It would be very surprising if all herbivorous dinosaurs habitually ignored these inanimate gifts of protein.

Ingestion could even be accidental, occurring while drinking, or eating aquatic plants - no specialized dental adaptations required...





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On Sun, Aug 28, 2016 at 9:54, Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
<tholtz@geology.umd.edu> wrote:
This is an interesting hypothesis, but let us not forget the possibility 
that the fish in the belly could be post-mortem associations. (After 
all, finding a gar in the belly of a hadrosaur is not evidence of 
piscivory in duckbills!)

On 2016-08-28 09:46, Brian Lauret wrote:

> I think it is worth mentioning that according to Victoria Arbour, who
> researches ankylosaurs, Little L's plastron is actually misidentified
> belly scales (seehttps://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__pseudoplocephalus.com_2014_04_02_scaling-2Dup_&d=DQICAg&c=clK7kQUTWtAVEOVIgvi0NU5BOUHhpN0H8p7CSfnc_gI&r=Ry_mO4IFaUmGof_Yl9MyZgecRCKHn5g4z1CYJgFW9SI&m=ls3_qEyVOCCJjjGHPq-2jZenRkmxvhyvYrseiF2u8eI&s=k3Pduly9AngRzJfsGQ8IL68PPrWDNLQZxYaP3R2QK0Y&e= 
> [2]). I have no opinion on the matter.

Arbor provides a close up photo of the supposed armor on that link. Note 
that it is NOT like the plastron of a turtle or the belly armor of some 
placodonts. I strongly suspect that she is correct. (And this probably 
IS the case of the remarkable preservation you refer to in the next 
paragraph).

It is from the Yixian, but keep in mind that preservation in any 
unit--even across the same bedding plane on a meter-scale--can be 
radically different. (These sites are remarkable because they CAN 
preserve fine details, not because they MUST preserve them. :-) ).

-- 
Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
Email: tholtz@umd.edu        Phone: 301-405-4084
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