Why were some Dinosaurs Herbivores?

Ahh! Dinosaurs!

Sorry.

Hey, smarty pants, I’m very excited to meet up with some of my dino pals. There’s Stegosaurus Sieve, Denny Diplodocus, and Tracy Triceratops. Whoa! Watch those horns, Trace!

Oops, sometimes I forget my own size.

Well, you are nearly the size of a school bus. 9 .8 feet tall and almost 30 feet long, so that’s understandable. Hi and thanks for coming. I thought I’d throw some burgers on the grill and we could chat.

Whoa, whoa, I hate to have to remind you of this trusty narrator, but we’re all vegetarians?

Whoops! My bad! Of course, you’re herbivores! Not simply vegetarian by choice, but specifically adapted anatomically and physiologically to and for eating plants. Unlike the carnivores who eat…

us.

uh i hope i have enough non -meat food

No worries, we all brought stuff to share. I brought some fresh ferns!

I brought tasty mosses

You’re gonna love my delicious palms. Wow.

Well, thanks guys, but I might just order a pizza, if you don’t mind. Ooh, can they make a veggie pie? Good question. And speaking of questions, what was life like for herbivores? And how did they protect themselves from carnivores?

And what happened to these gigantic…

Sorry, I owe you a new fence.

creatures? It’s time for another whiff of science on…

Who’s smart and who’s smarted? Who’s smart? Is it you? Is it me? Is it science or history? Listen up. Everyone, we make smarting lots of fun on who’s smarted.

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I just wish my friend Dino Hunter Robert Maroon could have made it. He loves Dino.

Is that why you wanted to meet at your house during your time period?

Well, that, and because I’m not very well equipped to evade prehistoric predators with super sharp teeth.

I hear ya! Those predators are crazy! Like the utoraptor, the spinoceros, and of course, the T. rex! Luckily, we all have adaptations to protect us. For example, I have giant triceratops horns!

And, as a Diplodocus, I have a long tail I can swing with amazing speed.

and Stegosaurus Steve has tall plates on his back, and a spiky tail for protection. Hmm.

Well, yes and no. While my tail is perfect for fending off predators, my back plates are actually pretty thin, and filled with blood, more like an earlobe than something hard like a fingernail. Oh, but they do make me look bigger and spikier, so hopefully that’s enough to make a carnivore think twice about biting me.

Another thing you have in your favor is the numbers. By most scientists count, 65% of all dinosaurs were herbivores, while only 35% were carnivores. That means six and a half out of every 10 dinos eat.

The fact that we vastly outnumber our predators helps us a lot. We often herd together. Many of us have good camouflage. And as we mentioned, each of us has a special defense mechanism — horns, spikes, plates, tails — to fight back when necessary.

kind of like superheroes with their special weapons. Now wait a sec. The words dinos and sorrows mean terrible and lizard in Greek. But you all don’t seem like terrible lizards. I’m an awesome lizard.

Not to mention, we’re not quite lizards like you’d think of them today. Instead, we’re members of a larger group of reptiles called archosaurs, which appeared about 250 million years ago.

But not all ancient reptiles are classified as dinosaurs. Smarty pants, true or false? Pterosaurs, flying reptiles or winged lizards are considered dinosaurs. If you said false, great job. Ooh, what about marine reptiles like the toothy ichthyosaurus, the long -necked plesiosaurus, and the crocodile -like mosasaurus?

Are they considered dinosaurs? Nope, and some of you are on a roll. So how do you define what is a dinosaur?

Dinosaurs are extinct animals with upright limbs that lived on land during the Mesozoic era, 252 to 66 million years ago!

We lay eggs. Many of us have scaly skin.

and many carnivores are thought to have had feathers. And the fossil record shows that birds are the most closely related living relative to the dinos.

Ahh!

Crocodiles and alligators are also close relatives, much scarier than chicken.

Paleontologists used to think we were probably cold -blooded like other reptiles, but it turns out we’re neither cold -blooded nor warm -blooded.

Really? Yep. Scientists studying our growth rates, adult size, and metabolism, which is the process of turning food into energy, discovered dinosaurs fell in the middle, between cold -blooded and warm -blooded.

So now, we’re thought of as mesotherms. Huh? Mezzo, meaning middle, in Greek. Not too hot, not too cold. Just…

Tuna fish and leatherback turtles are modern mesotherms. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Wow, and by the way, how do you do that?

do you know all of this? Oh, I found a book on dinosaurs on your shelf when I went to the bathroom. And I owe you a new toilet seat. Sorry.

Awesome. So tell me, what is a day in the life like in the era of the dinos? For example, my day goes like this. I wake up.

Mmm…

Brush my teeth, shower, get dressed, have some breakfast, and listen to my favorite podcast.

Who’s smarted?

Wait, so no one’s tried to eat you yet?

Nope! How many volcanic eruptions do you run away from?

None. And hopefully it stays like that.

Have you trekked a thousand miles to avoid rising sea levels?

Never. Though it is a growing concern. Sometimes I do trek down the block to Starbucks.

Wow, the future is awesome!

So what was life like in the past? At the beginning of the…

Mesozoic era, all the land was basically one giant continent known as Panchia. This was the Triassic period.

Smarty Pants. The Mesozoic Era is divided into three periods. Triassic, Jurassic, which I’m sure you’re familiar with, and Cretaceous. This whole era was a major time of change for the Earth, and for all the creatures who live here.

The landscape was warm, humid, and damp. Just one giant continent filled with lush plant life, aka delicious vegetarian snacks.

But by the end of the Triassic, Pangea had fragmented into many different landmasses. There was a lot of intense geological activity, volcanic activity, and rising sea levels due to the continental shift, which meant more water, less dry land.

Wow, sounds like lots of earthquakes, volcanoes, mudslides, and floods. Sounds scary!

So scary, dude.

For most of us, a typical day started with us waking up, meeting up with our herd, and starting a long walk.

Where were you headed? We’re looking for a more hospitable neighborhood. You know, someplace without a volcano erupting or the earth splitting in half?

During the Jurassic period, increased volcanic activity caused an abundance of CO2 in the atmosphere, creating a greenhouse effect. This warmed up the Earth and caused sea levels to rise. So as our coast shrinks and our weather becomes less hospitable, we’re looking for a new spot.

Where did you go? There’s only so far you can walk.

Not to mention, no GPS.

Honestly, we’re not really sure where we’re going, just hoping for a comfier home. And of course, we have to look out for predators.

Not just for us, but for our eggs. All dinosaurs lay eggs, but depending on the species, we may lay only three to five eggs, or a clutch, a group of eggs, of 15 to 20. Eggs take three to six months to hatch, and during that time, there’s lots of predators looking to snatch an egg.

It’s much easier to snatch my egg than attack a seven -ton triceratops the size of an elephant.

So our eggs are in danger, and so are our baby dinosaurs when they hatch. They’re so little and vulnerable. We might lay ten eggs, but likely only one dinosaur will grow to be an adult.

How long do adult herbivores live if they don’t become carnivore food?

It’s about the same as modern -day elephants, 70 to 80 years.

Hey, trusty narrator, I have a question for you. Where did dinosaurs come from?

And how did we go extinct? Whoa.

Those are some heavy questions from some heavy dinos. We’ll get to those right after this quick break. Hey, parents, trusty here. I love making it easy for people to learn new things. Shocker, right?

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Trust me, it’s a game changer. Now back to Who’s Smarted. I’m with my dino pals, the herbivores, and they just asked me where they came from and how they went extinct. Well, according to the fossil record, the isky gualasto formation in Argentina contains many examples of early reptiles known as reccosaurs and early mammal -like creatures called synodonts.

In this mix of creatures dating back about 230 million years, there’s a few suspected early dinosaur species, like the small likely carnivorous bipedals, Eudromius and Eoraptor, and the larger Herasaurus, one of the oldest definitive dinosaurs.

Wow, and I thought our names were tongue twisters.

New information is always being discovered though, so it’s hard to guess which pieces of the evolutionary puzzle might be missing.

That’s very true. Who knows, maybe a smarty pants listening now will one day become the paleontologist to put together some of those missing pieces.

What about… Extinction? I kind of want to be prepared.

Well, the good news for you is the mass extinction of prehistoric creatures won’t come until the Cretaceous period, long after you’ve all lived out your dinosaur lives. But it will be dramatic for your successors.

The rising temperatures and increased volcanic activity will be dangerous to their survival. But the mass extinction event most likely comes in the form of a meteor striking the Earth.

A meteor?

Yep, while there’s still some debate, the most widely accepted theory is that a piece of an asteroid, known as a meteor when it enters the Earth’s atmosphere, crashed into the Earth, filling the atmosphere with gas, dust, and debris that contributed to a drastically altered climate.

Ahhhh. And that climate change is what brings about extreme volcanism like so many volcanoes erupting at once.

Talk about scary. Yeah, I’m-

Glad I won’t be around for that.

But wait, how do we know that caused dinosaurs to go extinct?

We know it wiped out the dinosaurs because, so far, no evidence of dinosaurs can be found in fossils younger than 66 million years, the end of the Cretaceous period. Some small reptiles, mammals, birds, and fish survived, but dinosaurs, flying reptiles, and a large amount of the Earth’s forest and plant life all disappeared.

Imagine, one meteor wiped out about three quarters of life on Earth.

Whoa. Not that I don’t trust you, trusty narrator. But what makes scientists so short, that’s how it all went down.

Great question, and it’s good to be skeptical. The discovery of a huge impact crater called the Chicxulub Crater, along the coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, helps support the meteor theory. And research of ancient lava flows in India, known as the decontraps, as well as extremely large amounts of the metal iridium found in the Earth’s crust dating back to that period, supports the volcano part.

I see! In 2016, scientists drilled out a core sample underwater, in part of the Chicxulub Crater. This evidence revealed the meteor’s impact would have been so powerful that deadly amounts of vaporized rock and gas would remain in the atmosphere for years.

Well on that note I better get going. I’ve got places to go and dinos to see before the end comes.

Yeah, me too.

Hey, is anyone eating this plant? Whoop! Sorry! I owe you a new bird feeder.

Oh, it’s okay. Thanks for visiting, everyone.

Hey mate, sorry I’m late. Where’s the dinos?

Oh hey maroon you just missed them

Ah! No!

Hey, did one of you guys order a veggie pizza?

Ah, sure. I’ll take it. Hey!

A triple shout out to Super Smarties AJ, Lydia, and Jasper in Florida. I hear you love listening for the funny jokes and learning more about the world around you, and that you especially loved our episode about axolotls.

Well, I thank you, and so does Super Axolotl. This episode, Herbivores, was written by Libby Ward and voiced by Adam Tex Davis, Jenna Hoban, Taya Garland, Brandon Bayless, Max Kamaski, Gia Davis, and Jerry Colbert.

Technical direction and sound design by Josh Hahn. Who Smarted is recorded and mixed at the Relic Room Studios. Our associate producer is Max Kamaski. The theme song is by Brian Spinasares Suarez, with lyrics written and performed by Adam T.

Rax Davis. Who Smarted was created and produced by Adam Tex Davis and Jerry Colbert. This has been an Atomic Entertainment production.

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