Mollusk eating (was Re: Sauropod necks????)

[Renato Santos <dracontes@hotmail.com>]

This begs the question: is there any evidence of malacophagy (I think that 
is the term) in Mesozoic land vertebrates, specially dinosaurs?
What I am looking for in this is not enigmatic mandibles such has 
oviraptorosaurians' but cracked shells or signs of those being opened 
forcibly either by teeth or claw.

Interested,
Renato Santos

My online art gallery:
http://dracontes.deviantart.com
Comments and critics are appreciated.

> From: don ohmes <d_ohmes@yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: d_ohmes@yahoo.com
> To: dinosaur@usc.edu
> Subject: Re: Sauropod necks????
> Date: Sat, 21 May 2005 11:57:17 -0700 (PDT)
>
> I  must confess ignorance of (first name, honorific?)
> Holland or his work.
>
> I was trying to highlight the difficulty of
> reconciling the size of sauropods and the scaling of
> their jaws/teeth with the known forage needs and
> scaling of extant animals (as far as I know it hasn't
> been done, love to be corrected if it has), as opposed
> to commenting negatively on the hypothesis that
> sauropods ate molluscs.
>
> That said, if there is no coprolitic material
> conceivably attributable to sauropods that contains
> large quantities of (ground by gizzard stone?) mollusc
> shell, then I don't think it is very robust.
>
> Don
>
> --- Danvarner@aol.com wrote:
> > d_ohmes@yahoo.com writes:
> >
> > <<  (Someone even invented a
> > hypothetical mollusc to account for the big  guys
> > ability to sustain themselves...) >>
> >
> > Non-hypothetical unionid bivalves are abundant in
> > the Morrison. Holland
> > wasn't  "inventing" anything. Their remnants have
> > even been found in sauropod
> > ichnites.  Need a reference? :
> >
> http://rock.geosociety.org/absindex/annual/1999/50287.htm
> >
> >
> > DV
> >
> >

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