Tooth Fossil Reveals Dinosaur May Have Given Children Special Food

Illustration of a mother dinosaur Maiasaura feeding her baby in the nest. Recent studies of tooth fossils show that young dinosaurs likely got softer, high-nutrient food to grow quickly in the first year. (AI illustration)

JAKARTA - Dinosaur children likely did not eat the same food as their parents. A new study of tooth fossils shows that some dinosaurs fed their young softer, more nutritious food to grow quickly in the first year.

Citing The Independent, Wednesday, May 13, the findings came from a study of the Maiasaura peeblesorum tooth fossil, a duck-billed dinosaur that ate plants that lived about 75 million to 80 million years ago.

Until now, young dinosaurs are thought to have sought out their own food in smaller sizes. In carnivores, for example, they are thought to eat insects. In plant eaters, they are thought to eat fruit or buds.

However, the pattern of tooth wear on Maiasaura provides another clue. The teeth of young dinosaurs show more wear marks from crushing food. Meanwhile, the teeth of adult dinosaurs show more wear marks from slicing or cutting hard food.

From this pattern, researchers suspect that adult Maiasaura brought softer and higher protein foods for their children. The food was different from the mother's food, which was more in the form of hard, high-fiber plant parts, and had lower nutritional value.

"What we're providing is evidence that this behavior likely goes back much further than the origin of birds, possibly all the way back to the origin of dinosaurs," said John Hunter, one of the study's authors, published in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, quoted by The Independent.

According to researchers, Maiasaura's children likely ate low-fiber, more nutritious foods, such as fruit. This feeding pattern is thought to have helped them grow very quickly in their first year.

The findings also provide clues that parental feeding behavior, as now seen in many birds, could be rooted very deeply in dinosaur history.

The study even opens up the possibility that dinosaurs fed their young partially regurgitated food. Similar behavior is now commonly found in birds.

Scientists also say that dinosaur chicks may have still left the nest to find their own small food and fruit. However, in the first weeks after hatching, they likely still depended on their parents.

"Even among closely related dinosaurs, there are probably still quite a lot of things we can learn about them," said Hunter.

Researchers concluded that Maiasaura likely had a reproductive strategy similar to that of today's birds. Their young grow quickly because they get food from adult dinosaurs with higher protein content than the food their mothers eat themselves.