Determining if a prehistoric creature was a carnivore or a plant-eater isn’t as easy as comparing its skull shape and tooth patterns to modern animals with similar features, researchers from the American Museum of Natural History explain in a new PLOS One study.
Rather, using models and tests on living species, John J. Flynn, the Museum’s Frick Curator of Fossil Mammals, and his colleagues found that there is a complex link between animal diets and skull biomechanics, and that a creature’s ancestry plays a larger-than-expected role.
“Traditionally, when we looked at a fossilized skull with pointy piercing teeth and sharp slicing blades, we assumed that it was primarily a meat eater, but that simplistic line of thinking doesn’t always hold true,” he said in a statement. “We’ve found that diet can be linked to a number of factors – skull size, biomechanical attributes, and often, most importantly, the species’ position in the tree of life.”
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