Dinosaur Dung Suggests Wide Range of Grasses

Indian and Swedish paleobotanists analyzing fossilized dinosaur dung have found that the most prominent plant-eating dinosaurs were digesting different varieties of grass at least 65 million years ago, about 10 million years earlier than the date of the earliest grass fossils.

The sauropod dung, known as coprolites, contained microscopic particles of silica called phytoliths, which form inside plant cells in distinctive patterns that act as a signature. The researchers found numerous phytoliths certain to have come from the grass family, the team reported Friday in the journal Science. The findings included relatives of rice and bamboo and forage-type grasses. Grasses must have originated well over 80 million years ago for such a wide variety to have evolved and spread to the Indian subcontinent by the waning of the dinosaur age, the team concluded.