Gill, FL orcid.org/0000-0001-5036-0125, Hummel, J, Sharifi, AR et al. (2 more authors) (2018) Diets of giants: the nutritional value of sauropod diet during the Mesozoic. Palaeontology, 61 (5). pp. 647-658. ISSN 0031-0239
Abstract
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 its digestible energy content. The hypothesis that increases in NPP due to elevated atmospheric CO₂ contributed to the unparalleled size of the sauropods has recently been rejected, based on modern studies on herbivorous insects that imply a general, negative correlation of diet quality and increasing CO₂. However, the nutritional value of plants grown under elevated CO₂ levels might be very different for vertebrate megaherbivores than for insects. Here we show plant species‐specific responses in metabolizable energy and nitrogen content, equivalent to a two‐fold variation in daily food intake estimates for a typical sauropod, for dinosaur food plant analogues grown under CO₂ concentrations spanning estimates for Mesozoic atmospheric concentrations. Our results potentially rebut the hypothesis that constraints on sauropod diet quality were driven by Mesozoic CO₂ concentration.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | (c) 2018 The Authors. Palaeontology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The Palaeontological Association. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) |
Keywords: | esozoic; sauropod; diet; atmospheric CO₂; metabolizable energy; carrying capacity |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Earth Surface Science Institute (ESSI) (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number Royal Society DH0905513 Royal Society RG110322 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 07 Aug 2018 10:01 |
Last Modified: | 07 Aug 2018 10:01 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/pala.12385 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:134279 |