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| Titel |
Diets of giants: the nutritional value of herbivorous dinosaur diet during the Mesozoic |
| VerfasserIn |
Fiona Gill, Juergen Hummel, Reza Sharifi, Alexandra Lee, Barry Lomax |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2017
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
en
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 19 (2017) |
| Datensatznummer |
250144489
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| Publikation (Nr.) |
 EGU/EGU2017-8323.pdf |
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| Zusammenfassung |
| 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 digestible energy content of that NPP. The hypothesis that increases in NPP of land
plants due to elevated atmospheric CO2 contributed to the unparalleled size of the
sauropods, the largest ever land animals, has recently been rejected, based on modern
studies on herbivorous insects. However, the nutritional value of plants grown under
elevated CO2 levels might be very different for vertebrate megaherbivores with more
complex digestive systems and different protein:energy requirements than insects.
Here we show that the metabolisable energy (ME) value of five species of potential
dinosaur food plants does not decline consistently with increasing CO2 growth
concentrations, with maxima observed at 1200 ppm CO2. Our data potentially rebut the
hypothesis of constraints on herbivore diet quality in the Mesozoic due to CO2 levels. |
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