Premium
Diets of giants: the nutritional value of sauropod diet during the Mesozoic
Author(s) -
Gill Fiona L.,
Hummel Jürgen,
Sharifi A. Reza,
Lee Alexandra P.,
Lomax Barry H.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
palaeontology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.69
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1475-4983
pISSN - 0031-0239
DOI - 10.1111/pala.12385
Subject(s) - herbivore , productivity , biology , ecosystem , population , ecology , demography , sociology , economics , macroeconomics
A major uncertainty in estimating energy budgets and population densities of extinct animals is the carrying capacity of their ecosystems, constrained by net primary productivity ( NPP ) and its digestible energy content. The hypothesis that increases in NPP due to elevated atmospheric CO 2 contributed to the unparalleled size of the sauropods has recently been rejected, based on modern studies on herbivorous insects that imply a general, negative correlation of diet quality and increasing CO 2 . However, the nutritional value of plants grown under elevated CO 2 levels might be very different for vertebrate megaherbivores than for insects. Here we show plant species‐specific responses in metabolizable energy and nitrogen content, equivalent to a two‐fold variation in daily food intake estimates for a typical sauropod, for dinosaur food plant analogues grown under CO 2 concentrations spanning estimates for Mesozoic atmospheric concentrations. Our results potentially rebut the hypothesis that constraints on sauropod diet quality were driven by Mesozoic CO 2 concentration.