The first teeth from sauropods found in Queensland promise to unlock secrets of how these animals behaved millions of years ago.
Scientists have uncovered 17 fossilised teeth from long-necked dinosaurs that lived in outback Queensland millions of years ago, a find described as both incredibly rare and incredibly important.
The teeth all come from a species of dinosaur called Diamantinasaurus, which lived in the region during the early Late Cretaceous, about 94 million years ago, and which reached up to 16 metres long and weighed up to 20 tonnes. In addition to its size, Diamantinasaurus seems to have dominated in numbers in the ancient Queensland outback.
That means these larger sauropods were probably grazing on plant material off the ground, between 1 and 10 metres high, confirming they were filling an ecological niche which allowed other smaller dinosaurs to eat ground-level plants.That meant they were also eating harder material – not just leaves but branches and even conifer cones.
“A lot of other fossil sites in the region are clearly laid down by billabongs, whereas this one is pretty clearly a river channel or the like,” he said.
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