[Rockhounds] Over 500 fossilized poops show how dinosaurs came to rule the Earth

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

Researchers have conducted what could be the largest study ever of dinosaur
poop. The findings shed new light on how dinosaur's diets allowed them to
dominate the planet.

The analysis of hundreds of fossilized droppings (plus a little bit of
petrified vomit) from roughly 230 million years ago shows that dinosaurs
persevered because they were not picky eaters.

"The first dinosaur ancestors were opportunistic," says Martin Qvarnström,
a paleontologist at Uppsala University in Sweden, who led the study. "They
were eating insects, fish, plants — everything that they came across."

Ultimately, he says, over millions of years, that dietary flexibility
allowed them to rule the Earth.

https://www.npr.org/2024/11/26/nx-s1-5206634/fossilized-poops-show-how-dinosaurs-came-rule-earth