Were Horned Dinosaurs Carnivorous? - Cretaceous Corpse-Crunching Ceratopsians
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- Опубліковано 8 вер 2024
- We all know our dinosaurs, right? There are the two-legged horrible carnivorous monsters and then everything else that chows down on plants. That’s how the world works, right? There are herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores. Life has been governed by the same rules that it is governed by now, and by that, I mean there are no rules. The concept of herbivores and carnivores is to help out with organization but doesn’t really reflect the reality of the situation. Both herbivores and carnivores fall on a spectrum of greater or lesser herbivory or carnivory.
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I never considered Triceratops this way, but it definitely makes sense. Being the Mesozoic wild boars is a much more exciting and dynamic role for them to play.
More like a 30 foot hybrid of a wild boar and bison mixed with a bit of the bird/reptile-ness that dinosaurs in general tended to have.
I agree filling a pig like niche of digging up tubers and scavenging is a fascinating way to think of them. I wonder what actual experts in them would say.
Me neither and because of this I’ll never look at a horse the same way again
@@raptorfae.6645 It's an elephant sized rhino on steroids.
I love these kinds of videos because it makes you think about dinosaurs differently. My favourite is the fact that the T-rex had extremely powerful muscles attached to those tiny arms. Some traces of muscle tears has been observed so what is T-rex was quite an ambush predator, using those forelimbs for stability when pushing off with those gigantic legs, a land crocodile...
Given the fact that we can see many modern herbivores occasionally eat other animals, a triceratops munching primarily on plants and supplementing with some small animals would be far from the strangest thing recorded in nature.
Who knows maybe they ate the eggs of other dinosaurs as well.
i point this out whenever people freak out bout omnivore pachy
Wow a brachiosaurus would eat a human irl then
What scares me is the thought of a sauropod eating a small animal: i mean, where would you GO if something that big wanted to eat you?
@@devincasebeer4459 run away? They are really not that fast.
To mistake any herbivore as being peaceful gentle giants is a really fatal mistake. A Reminder that the 10 Deadliest African Animals are mostly Herbivorous, with the Hippo being the most deadly;
If Non avian dinos survived to modern day, we'd likely hear more stories of people being mauled by Trikes and Hadrosaurs than we would of T rex attacks.
More people are killed by Cows every year than Sharks, so take that as you will.
Elephants and Cape Buffs are definitely to be approached with caution.
yeah, i always wondered why people think all herbivores are gentle giants
@@bustavonnutz To be fair the chances of meeting a land animal are higher than meeting an animal that exclusively lives underwater.
@@WeakMighty25 i guess we are mostly exposed to tame farm animals , sheeps , pigs , cows , rabbits , chickens , goats , horses ,
But we frequently see cats and dogs killing small animals frequently , so the tought "what if these guys where bigger" comes more naturally than "what if sheeps wanted to kill me ?"
I don't think it's far fetched considering animals might mix their diet a bit like deer eating smaller animals and carcasses or crocs eating fruits and plants. Definitely an exciting subject
theres a video of a cow devouring a baby chick while grazing and it didnt seem like an accident. obligate herbivores and especially carnivores are so rare
The animals doing the switch-a-roo diet is nice and all, but about the animals that go
"Eating is nice stuff But I think that's too much work. sucking nutrients and doing nothing to benefit the host is an way better deal"
@@mustardsauce5201 I've heard of cases where they ate snakes because they are rich in phosphorus. I can believe that.
Yes. We’ve seen the same with ground sloths
Horses will eat small animals like mice and ducklings
The comparison to pigs is really interesting. Pigs can be found pretty much everywhere, like ceratopsians, and they both have wide bodies with low heads. There is even pigs with facial ornaments like babirusas. I hope someone with science knowledge looks in to if there could be some sort of convergent evolution points here.
It's even more if ceratopsians actually do dig in to the ground.
quite Possible, but sometimes we also try to hard to pigeonhole prehistoric animals into the same niche's as modern ones, when they may have been much different.
the only problem i see is that pigs primarily eat roots, and derived ceratopsians had few if any adaptations for digging
While an interesting take, I disagree with the comparison. We know due to fossilized stomach contents that ceratopsians were mostly herbivorous, whereas pigs and their ancestors have always been happy omnivores. Diet-wise, pigs are identical to (most) bears. It's an interesting theory but ignores a few things that we DO know about ceratopsians. A better extant comparison for a ceratopsian is actually the tortoise. Tortoises are mainly herbivorous, but will occasionally fill nutritional gaps with bone (particularly the marrow) and meat. Also, many people with scientific knowledge in the field have confirmed that there are no extant descendants of non-avian dinosaurs past those that descended from archosaur, so unless a missing link is discovered, any mammal is about as far away from ceratopsians as you can evolutionarily get.
@@bleddynwolf8463 pigs eat everything, not just roots. That's why they're so destructive as an invasive species. Eggs, juveniles, flightless birds, crops, etc etc. All fair game.
Fully grown Ceratopsians in their prime of life had to have been some of the most formidable animals of any kind to have existed on this planet. The power of those jaws is staggering.
Imagine a mother T.rex came back home after a hunt to feed her offsprings just to see a Triceratops chewing them.
T-Rex: Alright you! En Garde
Man if these trikes had a bad attitude to match their imposing looks, I don’t see how that couldn’t happen. Eating offspring when the opportunity arises, heck it might even stand its ground if it’s 1 lone T.Rex
@@KhanhNguyen-mh5ec ungaurded? or En garde?
@@GODEYE270115 a T-rex would be putting their life on the line going after a healthy, full grown triceratops. Triceratops was shorter but that just means they can position those horn in a T-rex’s guts.
I can see triceratopsians bullying predators into abandoning kills... We often forget how surprising and complex modern animal behaviour can be, let alone the behaviour of long gone species which we never got to come into direct contact with ... Very fascinating video and a fresh look at a stale topic of dinosaurs' questionable herbivory.
Now I imagine a triceratops with the bully character of a honey badger.
That reminds me of the giant sloth bullying smilodon for meat in _Walking with Beasts_
@@aleisterlavey9716 I'd rather not😂😂 my goodnes hahah
I can definitely see that. What would raptors do against a 13 ton, full grown, triceratops breaking their vegan diet on their cheat day?
I love this concept of the “peaceful herbivores” leaning towards the omnivorous side
Also notice that "Carnivore-Herbivore" classification is mostly kept to Mammalia. On the other hand, every damned extant avian dinosaur that eats plants also eats meat and insects to some capacity--even hummingbirds. Of course, that's because beaks are better adapted for a generalized diet. But even that, right there, legitimizes the hypothesis that beaked ornithischians were adapted for omnivory, similarly to modern day parrots and toucans.
The video is actually pretty inaccurate on how real classifications are made between carnivore and herbivore. We don't go by diet, we go by multiple factors. For example humanity is a carnivorous species, we've always been classified as such as we can get all needed nutrients from a single source. It's the same inference we use for other animals. It never pushes the idea that animals only ate this or that, it's a point of fact what the animal is best adapted to process. Humans are adapted for hunting and consuming meat, all of our essential nutritional needs are satisfied by meats (even vitamin C which people think are only in plants) we were pushed into eating plants by our changes in life style, like cooking food which destroyed some nutrients which pushed humans to incorporate fruits into the diet. Dogs are in the same classification as humans, they only need nutrients found in animals, but due to essentially living off of a human created diet are supplemented the lost nutrition through plants. The point is animals like Triceratops likely did opportunistically eat small animals like all herbivores we know of do. But that in no way makes them omnivores as they do not strictly need the animal only nutrition in the animal.
@@Matt_History most people consider humans omnivores. We generally cannot meet all of our nutritional needs from meat. We do not produce vitamin c endogenously and we need it to survive. There are some hotly debated theories about whether or not you need as much vitamin c on an all-meat diet and can cover down on the difference with whats in meat, but most evidence suggests otherwise for most people. Like fishermen and explorers needing to bring a source of vitamin c with them on long trips to avoid scurvy, which they would get if they tried to subsist entirely on the meat they fished out of the ocean or packed in salt in barrels. There's no 'real classifications' anyhow, not in any singular authoritative sense anyhow. Different contexts require different systems of classification. You would not apply the principles off classification used in natural history to medicine. They serve different purposes. We have no f-ing clue about the precise metabolic machinery of dinosaurs, for example; all we have are bones. And that's fine, since we also don't need to actually feed any dinosaurs the right diet.
@@homelessrobot terrestrial animals livers contain vitamin C. You're not looking at the entire animal, just the parts we find tasty now. Every nutrient humans need can be found in plentiful quantities inside cows and other Ungulates. Because we evolved to hunt them
@@Matt_History sure they contain vitamin c. but you have to be able to tolerate the amount of vitamin A they also contain in order to get a sufficient amount of vitamin c from them. You can easily experience vitamin A toxicity sourcing a healthy amount of vitamin c from liver.
What if the "Fighting Dinosaurs" fossil actually illustrates the Protoceratops attempting predation on the Velociraptor? Certainly makes more sense than vice versa, which would be equivalent to a fox trying to kill a boar.
I was actually just thinking the same thing, and since the bite force was enough to break the raptors leg, its very plausible
So you’re saying that they both die trying to hunt each other to death?
@@luisvelez1952 or the ceratops was the initial aggressor.
🚬🕵🏼♂️
Framed all along for an attack you never committed…
@@luisvelez1952 Ever seen a boar fight a Coyote? Lol
@@almostsirens6577 i think so
I'm surprised you didn't mention the possibility that Pachycephalosaurs were also omnivores. This was touted as a fact for decades. I still remember books from the early 2000s mentioning this. There was also the time when Troodon was considered a carnivorous ornithischian, due to the similarities seen in teeth of it & Pachycephalosaurus. To my knowledge, the only time this was brought to the public's attetion was in the book "Dinosaurs! The 1987 Childcraft Annual". This was obviously the time before Troodon was re-classified as a theropod & the family Troodontidae was brought back from obscurity.
Yeah! In a dinosaur survival simulation game called Beasts of Bermuda both their pachycephalosarus and coahuilaceratops are omnivores.
Some pro were upset at this because ceratopsians and pachy plAnT EaTeR.
It makes me proud of the game for either being ahead of it's time or risking public controversy over it.
I mean semi sharp beaks with grinders and small size? No doubt man expeshaly females they would have likely ate a ton of meats or knawed on bones or smashed bones open even
Holy shit childcraft. That brings back memories
And don't forget those books showing Pachycephalosaurs breathing fire. ( Just kidding. We know where those guys are coming from.)
Don't forget therizinosaurus and family yeah they were herbivores but still a theropod
Not sure if I'd put pandas on the "strict herbivores" side with koalas. There's plenty of evidence that they'll occasionally eat small animals & scavenge as well. There are accounts of them raiding chicken coops & footage of them hunting peafowl & eating the decaying meat of takin.
Pandas are actually still fully omnivorous physiologically. What people don't get is that nutritionally they consume a ratio of sugars to proteins that's still very similar to brown bears. The difference is that brown bears get the bulk of their sugar from consuming berries, so they need to eat far less plant matter by mass to get their fill compared to pandas who have to get it from bamboo. In China wild pandas will hunt down goats and sheep and the local farmers have been deliberately feeding them such livestock because the government compensation for panda predation is much higher than the market price for such animals.
Same with most of the monkeys and apes shown. Baboons are definitely omnivores and will actively hunt and kill gazelle fawns if given the opportunity. A horse or deer will eat a baby bird or a mouse if it stubbles on it and needs the minerals but monkeys and apes will actively hunt other animals.
Pandas will also eff you up if you so much as breathe wrong in their vicinity. People see the youtube videos of zoo pandas just rolling around being cute and dumb and don't realize that they are still very much BEARS. Your average bear prefers berries and roots, with fish as the main source of meat, but they won't hesitate to eat you if you are a nuisance.
The “herbivores” eating meat made me unexpectedly uncomfortable
It happens all the time ! Look at deers and boars and hippos
Why?
They need the sweet sustaining luscious nutrients bro
@@Kyle-sr6jm it's part of nature and they need proteins. Don't believe that vegan shit.
Also there are also murders in nature like monkeys kidnapping baby lions
@@Kyle-sr6jm it made me a bit uncomfortable too. Only at certain points though purely because it was a bit gross. I think people might be uncomfortable because when we think of herbivores we think of good peaceful and harmless creatures. So when they eat something thats alive it can be disturbing
Interesting take.
Makes me wonder who the agressor really was on the protoceratops-velociraptor fossil...
My client was framed!
🚬🕵🏼♂️
i dont think it was a case of predation,but territorial or the velociraptor was hunting the proceratops,and like boars it used its beak to self defense altho just like the animals in the vid small animals could have been part of it's diet
@@toniotrussardi8126 Thats speculation! My client gets a bad rap because “ he was a predator”. Before you call someone a “ predator “ lets first examine yourself and how you use loaded turns.
He defended himself from being eaten alive and without proof there’s no way to prove it in a court of law!
🚬🕵🏼♂️
@Blood Angel I was thinking the same thing my friend . As well as the original Gobi protoceratops/egg nest /ornithomimus, Chapman found, that originated the proto "protecting" its nest hypotheses, from over 80 years before. Forever cementing the Oviraptor, "egg robber" as an opportunist, rather than perhaps its more likely role now, as the protective parent. Definitely thought provoking.
I heard recently that the eggs in that nest were actually found to be the raptor's, not the proto's.
You know now that I think about it, there is something familiar about the beak shape of Ceratopsians, it resembles the hook shaped beaks of carnivorous birds ( i.e. Raptors like eagles and the extinct "Terror Birds") which could also explain why Ceratopsians could have been more carnivorous than the more flat or blunt beaked Ornithopods like the hadrosaurs.
Yeah , they might have been scavangers in fact and would have probably be able to maybe sometimes kill a young adrosaur and do cannibalism ...
They might have been the bears/boars of their ecosystem ,
Eating whatever they could chomp on
The Forrest rockets!
Also similar to tortoise beaks and those animals eat about anything that can´t outrun them
Was thinking the same thing
Ironically, I had just read in Mark Witton's Life Through the Ages II that Gastornis (a "terror bird" of sorts) is now thought to be likely a herbivore.
Scavenger Triceratops : Exists
Horner's Tyrannosaurus: Finally A worthy opponent! Our Battle will be legendary!
I love speculation like this that is so rooted in real world science but just uncommon enough to have escaped most of the discourse. It changes your perspective and opens up new ways of thinking that creates a floodgate of creativity
FINALLY, someone, that proves my point!! I always said all herbivores are opportunistic omnivores but people don't believe me >:c
We should show this to that vegan teacher lol
The terms you're looking for are "obligate" and "facultative" herbiovores and carnivores. "Obligate" means that the animals almost exclusively eat either meat or vegetation (i.e. Cats vs Koalas) while "Facultative" means that they mainly may eat either flesh or plant matter but will opportunistically vary their diet.
What if.. they were scavengers? Loose
groups that roamed and browsed plants while traveling from carcass to carcass. Though I don't know of any species that feeds specifically in this way, its a neat thought.
Boars kinda do that also bears
Yeah, something like a bear-style diet that leans harder on meat the worse the plant situation gets, and vice versa, with some occasional scavenging.
Your choice of music for the "herbivore" montage is both great and horrifying. Well done
I grew up working on a farm so it's actually funny to me that people find a cow eating a bird horrifying.
For the record, I could totally see Cera’s dad going carnivore. Dude was meaner than the carnivores most of the time.
I have to imagine they chowed down on small animals at least occasionally. It just makes logical sense. But there primary diet being the tougher may be more fibrous plant parts also makes the most sense to me. But just being opportunistic omnivores is also a decent option.
Animals don’t care about the classifications and labels humans have made for them as we try to learn about the world. They care about surviving. Any animal will take an opportunity if believes it will help it survive.
that is a good point- the only reason to pass up on meat (dead or alive) is if you have evolved into such a specialist that your digestive system does not want it or can't handle it.
Whats interesting is that if they Ceratopsian's were omnivores, they would likely have been the most carnivorous of the bird-hipped dinosaurs who were otherwise all herbivores. But this was a question I have been asking myself ever sense I found out about their shearing back teeth, one look at the beak and those teeth it made me wonder.
Turtles sometimes eat/chew on animal bones in order to get the calcium in order to grow their shell. Deer also eat bird chicks if they get the chance. A herbivore MOSTLY eat grass and fiber they would be missing some minerals. But herbivorous dinosaurs certainly weren't strictly eating meat.
Nope. That would upset the fermentation process in their guts.
@@petrairene How can you know for sure which dinosaurs had fermentation in their guts? Not every herbivore does that today. We don't have direct evidence this was the case for dinosaurs. It's likely, especially given the size of their digestive sysyems, but not a guarantee.
@@realityshotgun We can't know for certain unless we get fossilized guts, but paleontologists can make educated guesses based on an animals teeth shape and ocompare them to extant animals. Take sauropods and their peg like teeth for instance, Since all of their teeth are like that with no teeth for chewing, it's possible that they fermented their food after going through a gizzard first.
@@petrairene It certainly would if they were only eating meat.
@@Riceball01 Of course they fermented. Put 100 kilos of random plant matter in a dense pile and leave it. Even on a cold day microbes will go to work immediately and the pile will be getting hot. If that dino eats these 100 kilos plant matter that fermentation will happen in that animal's guts..
You pump out so much quality content nowadays. One of my favourite channels at the moment for sure.
My personal theory is that Triceratops would push T-Rexes away from kills and as an unintended side effect began to develop scavenging/predatory adaptations that aided to the "arms race" between the two species.
Interesting, their defensive equipment could have served to help them squat on kills they stole from others, adding an element of giant klepto-parasitism to their lifestyle! I love the ceratopsian group; there is so much to speculate on.
This can explain why triceratops are loner like most large predators instead of regular large herbivores herd animals.
@@backpackpepelon3867 Huh, I thought possible herding or solo lifestyle remained undetermined. Any info you can point me towards on that?
@@hope1575 yes, its remained as that. What imma try to say is that it can be use support the solo live theory, tho I'm not good at wording it.
I do believe the most accepted theory on the "arms race" (assuming you mean the one between tyrannosaurs and ceratopsians as a whole) was due to pressures related to the former hunting the latter.
this is something I've talked to people about for about a year now, it would only make sense for herbivores to occasionally eat meat. just as in real life cattle and horses have been known to eat small animals which gives more nutrients and protein
Loving all the recent uploads! This is an interesting idea, I agree it would make sense for ceratopsians to be occasional omnivores.
Something about them possibly being a giant bird/reptile-like wild boar analogy makes very much sense. This is my favorite video from you.
Could the trike be entirely omnivorous? Their strong sharp beaks and jaws could slice through anything and their horns wouldn't do much as it only protects the face while other horned animals had protection everywhere like rhinos with very thick skin similarly to their face all over their body but a keratinous head with a sort of hard body makes not a lot of sense
Honestly i've also come to think it :
Triceratops seems to not travel in herds ...
Wich might suggest a behavior more like that of bears than the one of buffalos wich would have been hadrosaurs ...
Honestly the more i think about it the more it makes sense
I'm getting major dejavu with this comment and this video
especially considering their size. they'd need to eat a LOT to sustain growth, especially compared to modern animals
unlikely,but small ones like proceratops could
I love the idea of a trike being an ambush predator, lying in wait at the edge a forest, then sprinting forth in a deadly burst of speed as its massive horns pierce the torso of its chosen prey. It's horrifying, but I love it.
3:17 I mean there is the so called "Vampire Squirrel" from Indonesia.
COMMON!!! BABOON? CHIMPAZEES? CHIPMUNK? I always assumed those three to be confirmed omnivores, I'm in doubt the need for them to be in the montage
yeah specially the peaceful part..we all know what baboons and chimps are capable of
I'll be honest : the more i think about it , the more it makes sense for triceratops to have been an omnivorous boar/bear like animal ,
Why would it have a hooked beak ?
Or theets that are adapted to chew more vertically ?
Or forward facing weaponary ?
They could have rather easly just ambushed a careless hadrosaur skewer him and eaten what they felt like eating ...
This would have been occasional since they where rather slow , but they may have also been part of the reason ankilosaurs grew so short and heavy set ,
They just look rather dangerous and somewhat predatory for fully erbivorous animals ...
I feel they might have been rather frequent scavangers and predators of small animals that also engaged in occasional predation of large animals ,
But yeah i honestly think that triceratops was the real kleptoparasite all along
look at that mouth and tell me it don't resemble a dunkleosteus
To counter your points:
Hooked beak: For digging up tubers and roots. Tortoises are mostly herbivorous and have hooked beaks for the reasons stated.
Forward facing weaponry: There are many obligate herbivores today with such weaponry. Rhinos, bison, many types of cattle, deer all come to mind. Ceratopsian weaponry is NOT a good hunting tool, it's a DECENT defense tool and probably best used as mating display.
Teeth adapted to chew vertically: The fact that they are adapted to chew in the first place should be your first hint there. Carnivores do not chew, they slice, and ceratopsian molars are very similar to horse molars. They are very well adapted for grinding fibrous, woody tissue, such as the plants that were common at the time. Moreover, I can tell you from personal experience with horses and cattle and seeing trike teeth in person? They were grazers, constantly feeding. You can tell by the wear on them. You can't be a grazer with any kind of dependency on meat. No obligate herbivore is truly vegan, we know this. Horses, giraffes, camels, have all been observed in the wild particularly cracking into bones to supplement their calcium. But I sincerely doubt ceratopsians were as opportunistic as porcine/ursine animals today. And in fact, you only see that kind of opportunism in animals who are malnourished. And no, the yearling horse accidentally eating a baby bird out of curiosity doesn't count. Horses explore the world with their mouths, that was not "hunting" behavior, it was sheer dumb curiosity and unawareness on the horse's part.
This is one of my all-time favorite speculations about dinosaurs. Jurassic Park wishes it had anything as terrifying as a murderous boar-ceratops.
I wouldnt say Carnivorous I would say Omnivorous in the Hippopotamus Style and aggression!
I wonder if herbivore dinosaurs suffered the infamous zombie disease as well! Anyways EDGEs content is always appreciated!
What is the zombie disease?
@@sapphirII it is also called the perishing disease it is absolutely unsettling when you realize it could therotically or potentially infect humans
The only carnivorous part was essentially in the title for a cheap hook on clicks.
@@Gacha-Man really how explain
Although we do know hippos chickens deers and boars are opportunistic omnivores
@kade 7263 That a new one. The only one I knew was the zombie fungus.
Watching this, I couldn't help but recall something I'd read some years ago. I'm sure many people have read a book called 'The Dinosaur Heresies' written by renowned paleontologist Bob Bakker. I remember there was something about a 'junk-food diplodocus', a sauropod skeleton whose rib cage had clam shells and other odd bits and pieces inside of it. Bob Bakker was dismissive of claims that this was the dinosaur's stomach contents, suggesting that the shells and so on got inside the part buried skeleton long after the dino died.
This video, however, suggests he might have got it wrong, that in fact the shells and stuff really were part of the unfortunate dino's last meal. If a recent wild fire had destroyed all edible plant material in the area, wouldn't an animal eat almost anything it could find to stave off starvation? And what we've discovered was the tragedy of an individual creature desperately trying to survive, and failing?
Were the shells being used as gastroliths?
No need for it to be starvation in fact based on the biological mechanisms suspected to have been used by sauropods to digest plants their efficiency at herbivory may have been directly size dependent on the volume of their gut. Accordingly there is evidence suggesting young sauropod hatchlings were probably significantly more carnivorous than adults as the skeletons of hatchling show clear evidence of binocular vision which is almost exclusively seen in animals with a highly omnivorous or primarily carnivorous diet suggesting they may have stated out life as primarily predatory likely consuming insects and other small animals to quickly gain the nutrients to grow up rapidly. The large morphological disparities between the young and adults are quite common in modern animals with age based niche succession which is actually the norm among sauropsids with the neoavian birds being the largest exception.
Moreover clam shells like bones are a rich source of calcium in the form of calcium carbonate and calcium is hard to come by in a vegetarian diet. I can't think of a single herbivore on Earth which doesn't supplement their diet this way whether by consuming bones, eggshells, seashells etc. so it is hard to imagine that any animal yet alone a giant one like a Sauropod would have lost that trait remember that the evidence of walking fish and the anatomy of early tetrapods suggests that the ancestor of all tetrapod's was primarily a specialized predator that adapted to ambush prey in murky waters by sneaking up on them from the "riverbed" rather than swimming up to them and producing easily sensed vibrations that many animals in such murky waters are adapted to use to keep watch for predators. Herbivory among tetrapods as far as we can tell didn't start appearing until part way through the Permian. Meat is just so much easier to digest than plant products since it is made up of the same stuff as animals unlike plants which split off from us close to 1.6 to 1.7 billion years ago.
@@Dragrath1 yes, of course you are quite right. I hadn't thought of that angle. Now I think about it more, I can think of another reason why a creature might want to eat something that it rich in calcium. Medullary bone is a type of bone laid down by some female reptiles and all female birds as it stores calcium ready for the production of eggshell. I don't know if female mammals do something similar to supply developing embryos with calcium, and then for the production of milk, but it is at these times that something rich in minerals needs to be eaten. It would be interesting to know if, on a re-examination of that sauropod skeleton, medullary bone is found.
Of course, all animals need a regular supply of micronutrients to maintain their bodies all the time, regardless of gender. So we will never know why the 'junk-food diplodocus' had/has such a queer collection of things in its stomach area. But if there is medullary bone deposits in the fossil, could it mean we're looking a recently mated animal getting ready to produce some eggs? Just a crazy thought... 😁
North Dakota fish and game has determined that the number one predator of ground nesting birds is white-tail deer. They munch the hatchlings like Easter candy.
I can totally see ceratopsians filling out the role of a warthog. They're big, heavy set animals with an extremely broad dietary range.
Hoover your way through the flora and then go wild whenever meat is available. Its a very effective lifestyle.
Watching triceratops skulls and how they are recreated, I always havethe feeling, that thoso who recreate these animals have never seen a hyppo. Hyppos have a very similar facial bone, but you can never see it. It is covered with tissue. It's time to put some more flash on these dinos, they looks like skeletons with skin.
Which bone in particular are you referring to?
Be the change you wish to see!
Yes, but reptiles and birds generally have fewer facial muscles than mammals Compare a dog skull to a bird/croc skull
@@chrismartin3197 Indeed if memory serves the difference in musculature comes down to chewing which as far as we can tell is a unique adaptation to certain lineages of advanced synapsids back during the late Permian well before the first true mammals appeared. So unless a lineage of Sauropsids went down a similar evolutionary trajectory this would likely have been true as well.
@@chrismartin3197 How many 4 leg birds we have nowdays? It's not a common thing, that bones reach the surface of an animal, not even in case of reptiles. As far as we know, triceratops was a large animal, so I find it strange, that the bone of the face, is not just reaching the surface, but act as a tusk. This part of the skull is very similar to a hippo's skull, which can be a very strange animal with a similar skinny look. Of course we can not be sure, but we should think about options, and currently I think, the habit, that triceratops looks like this is stops people thinking, that it may had a completely different pig like round had, with a polip like beak. What if the face was covered with feathers? SO many option out there, and I liked this video, because it has the couriga to think out of the box.
1:36 weird looking giraffe lol But imagine a t-rex attacks a group of triceratops and goes for its young, but then the bull comes in and fatally wounds the rex. And they all gather around and eat the giant predator. That is rather terrifying ngl.
I could see that occurring in a rare circumstance during a drought where there isnt much plant life to feed a heard. Just taking what has been given to them since their main source of food is gone.
People will do this as well. If the food they generally will accept as food is gone or in such scarcity, as well as dire financial situations. they will try many other things for food that they otherwise wouldnt even consider. The lowest and darkest option being another person. But generally Dog and cat food is a common occurrence when things get rough.
That reminds me of the videos where hippos gang up on a crocodile, although I don't know if they ever manage to kill it. In fact come to think of it, perhaps the croc-hippo coexistence goes back to when crocs had to share space with hippo-like dinosaurs.
You've got me wondering if any of the non-avian dinosaurs cough up pellets like owls do.
I wonder if cannibalism would have happened after a dinosaur died, plenty of calcium and protein there without much effort.
I'm sure it happened. Especially during hard times such as long migrations through basically wastelands or during sever droughts.
Congrats on 100k!! You deserve it man, keep putting out quality content!
Horse only recently lost their canines. With deer the well known rule is they either have antlers or tusks (canines). Then there's whales who went from ungulates to a piscivorous lifestyle.
Most songbirds who are vegetarians as adults feed their chicks with insects.
I wonder if adult ceratopsians were feeding their juveniles with animal meat. It is more likely of that the young were omnivores. Probably
I feed my chicks McDonald's
When I was a kid, I watched the original "King Kong." To my mind, the thought of the Styracaceous that munched on that ship crewman wasn't farfetched. I figured that, not only that ceratopsian was "defending" its turf from the human intruders, but it also wanted some flesh! I grew up on a farm, and we would often feed our horses and cows with the customary grains and grasses ("hay") but we'd also include bone meal in their food.
This is an interesting idea, and certainly feasible, and I can only imagine how everyone would freak out if they actually found another dinosaur in a triceratops stomach cavity
that compilation... just wow... is there an award we can nominate you for? because I want to nominate you for that HIGHLY enlightening and excellent clip. (Not joking I know this sounds sarcastic its not) I was laughing and dying inside at the same time genius!
Cervidae are actually pretty well known for monching on bones, especially those that grow antlers. They will often eat dropped antlers to help fuel the regrowth of new antlers.
glad to see some people are starting to think wait hold on just how did ceratopsians get all that calcium everyone sees them as either bulls or rhinos when in reality warthog or wild boar is probably more accurate, just what reason would their beaks have to be curved almost in exactly the same way as living raptors?
Except that their beaks are not curved in the same way as raptors. They are curved more like the beaks of parrots.
@@KurNorock Well parrots are omnivores.
@@KurNorock protoceratops and pachyrhinosaurus yeah but some especcially basal ceratopsians like aquilops literally got its name from well having a hawk like beak, and triceratops's beak sort of resembles a terror bird beak.
@@Akaryusan Ok? So a basal ceratopsian might have had a raptor like beak..
That specific basal ceratopsian was also bipedal.
This just means that herbivorous triceratops may have evolved from a possibly carnivorous or omnivorous ancestor over 25 million years. Which is not difficult to imagine.
Now I'm reminded of the Boba's Bantha enjoying that crispy bird.
I got into an argument with my brother cause he said "Plant fibers were found in T rex teeth, therefore T Rex was an herbivore"
Cats and Dogs eat grass sometimes. Imagine 5000+ years in a time when cats are extinct ... the people of the future say "I think cats were herbivores. Cause we found grass in their teeth."
This is awesome. And I would definitely have to agree on them needing calcium for that crest. On a Blog article that I'm constantly updating, on the behavior and care of dinosaurs in captivity, I theorized that to keep that crust looking nice, you'll definitely need a good amount of calcium in their diet.
Tortoises need lots of calcium. For small torts, snails are a delicacy...
Perhaps a video on the difficulties or lack of 'herbivorous' animals digesting flesh would be a good follow up to this.
I would assume ceratopsians would mostly just do so through scavenging.
"Carnivorous" is a bit click-baity. Cows will eat a baby chick if they get in the way, but that makes them neither carnivorous or omnivorous.
"Herbivores are just opportunistic omnivores"
"Carnivores are just picky omnivores"
Very interesting findings, especially regarding supporting ornaments on the animals. I’d love to see how to see similar findings on stegosaurs in detail
Going to share this with my mom since her favorite dinosaur is Triceratops.
I like to similarly remind people of the horrors of pigs when they say pigs are cute or that they want one as a pet 🤣 seriously, if you slip and fall while having a pig as a pet, you could find their cuteness quickly fading while they eat you alive the moment they realize you're incapacitated.
Interesting points. I'll add; ceratopcian tooth battery were for slicing unlike large ornithopod tooth battery Erich, like elephanudae, were for grinding greens.
Ceratopcians could slice greens AND slice through flesh.
There is crushed crab remains in irnithopod gut fossils so Ceratopcians definitely ate at least small animals.
Oh god EDGE, I knew this was a terrible pick for my lunch video.
Mmm, now I'm in the mood for chicken nuggets!
With the discovery of rhizophagy, the process where plants take in bacteria,
dissolve the cell walls and absorb most of the cells for their nutrients,
plants can be considered partially carnivorous!
Pretty much every herbivorous animal(with the exception of elephants) will eat a bit of meat when they can get it, but it wouldn't be surprising to learn that herbivorous dinosaurs did the same thing.
7:45 😂 only if we cook
Solid video. Very thought provoking. 👍 Subbed 👍🐊
There was an ankylosaurid/nodosaurid that has fish scales preserved in its stomach: Liaoningosaurus paradoxus. It also shows multiple features that point to it being likely a turtle-esque semi-aquatic predator.
WAIT!! In that TV show called "Dinosaurs", the one with the fat green red shirted megalosaur called Earl, Earl's boss was a ceratopsidian of some kind, and I remember that in one episode the boss eats a small mammal alive, to which Earl comments something like "I thought you were an herbivore!" and the boss says something in the lines of "That's for weak dinosaurus!"
This reminded me of that...
Imagine traveling in time and the first thing you see is a bull triceratops staring at you with a bloody mouth chewing the obvious remains of a small bird-like dinosaur.
A very interesting take! I always hated how animals typically viewed to be herbivores were seen as the sweet, gentle and harmless ones. When in reality, some of the most dangerous animals have been proven to be animals such as hippos (Hippos killing ten times more people than lions do), pigs, etc. I would much rather run across a carnivorous theropod dinosaur in the Mesozoic Era rather than something like a ceratopsian or sauropod; those would likely be way more aggressive than most realize and they definitely have the potential to do a lot of damage and even death.
Imagine the sheer amount of insect protein the Sauropods undoubtedly ingested while stripping leaves
That squirrel....I laughed way harder than I should have.
Biggest plot twist of the week!!
Awesome video!! Please, can you talk about the fluffy Pachyrhinosaurus theory on a future video? =D
At 2:56, thats a cow eating its own placenta (after birth), its not known for sure why they do this, but most suspect (myself included), that this is so the smell of it doesnt draw predators
Your used to a pack of rexes hunting triceratops, but are you ready for...
A herd of triceratops hunting a T rex...?
Best twist of all time. Imagine a trike following a trex and cleaning up after them.
You. Are. Gold. The Offenbach was brilliant.
You really do a great job. Can't imagine how much work you put into all this. Many thanks!
You forgot the Rabbit! Lol! My first introduction to herbivores eating meat was a hare eating another rodent of some kind.
Thinking of a Triceratops as a Mesozoic boar analog that's the size of a school bus makes me love the big guys even more.
That squirrel munching on a shrew burrito though 🙀 3:16
Man, _Land Before Time_ took a real dark turn during that time Cera had to eat the remains of another dinosaur after that drought just to keep herself alive.
Honestly I just wanna say I'm a hobbiest
I have no education in biology or paleontology
But I think it's pretty common for herbivores to partake in small amounts of meat
An example is how the average dairy cow can eat a snake/bird as seen in the video. I think it would be foolish to decide a Dino couldn't eat meat due to herbivorous adaptations, so I could definitely see a triceratops chowing down on a baby dromeosaur or small Raptor as 1 a way to protect the herd, and 2 to pick up on things like calcium, iron, sodium, and other Essential nutrients, as well we don't know every Dino so there's probably a bunch of animals that would end up on the chopping block of everyone, early mammals were sorta in that category between the mid Jurassic to mid Cretaceous where Dino's took over every niche and mammals could only scrape by with stealth scavenging
For years we are making the tricertops face shrinkwrapped
I have no clue why people are moving away from reconstructions like that 5:58 and labeling them "mammalian-like". Even though bird mouths look almost exactly like that except moved slightly further back; it's not like is anything new for a dinosaur.
Pretty sure Pachycephalosauridae and Therizinosauridae could also fit as omnivorous dinosaurs I think, they are well equipped to hunt too after all, especially therizinos
If you ask me, we should start implementing the terms "omnivorous herbivores" and "omnivorous carnivores" to better help understand where exactly on the Herbi - Carni scale many animals are. (This would not be as effective as some might think now considering the clips between 2:08 and 3:20 but it'd definitely help bring some things into a little better perspective.)
2:54 it is extremely common amongst mammals for the mothers to eat the afterbirths both as a way to recovers vitamins and nutrients and as a way to help hide the baby (reducing the source of smells for a carnivore to track) this includes most "herbivorous" mammals like the cow in the video.
From my understanding, the necessity of occasional omnivory in modern ungulates, nutritionally speaking, is phosphorus rather than calcium, which might inform anatomical analysis of crested dinos and their potential omnivory
Well we have plague locusts in the Morrison formation so i would not be surprised if many dinosaurs (there is not many species (outside of high browsing sauropods that i can imagine not making use of this)made use of them in the wet season. But onto the meat of the subject, yeah i agree, I've often enough seen cattle eating road kill, especially in the dry season when graze can be scarce, i can imagine omnivory being a good option for all kinds of ceratopsians.
most likely not, since bears are considered omnivorous because they have meat on their main plate, & deer are herbivores since meat isn't on their main plate. I think it's likely triceratops would have eaten some meat & still be herbivorous
Another note is that long horn cows are problematic in herds with other cows because those long horns are used to horde good food sources and the other cows can not compete with them for something like grain in one large bin. Their horns and frills could have served a similar purpose. If there food was more work to get to then they would want to defend the spoils after doing the work.
I might be a bit sociopathic... Because I found all those feeding videos hilarious with that music.
Now, this is terrifying to think about.
Many good points here for that hypothesis. I just had to think how many little critters live in between the grass on a pasture - cows and horses take them all together with the plants.
This topic reminded me of another. Today, various groups of plants like ferns and conifers don't have any modern consumers. Yet, it is presupposed that given their dominance in the mesozoic, they would have been the primary feed material of dinosaurs. Are these plants somehow waiting for dinosaurs to come back and consume them?
Now what about theropods like T. rex or Allosaurus occasionally eating plant matter?
Original it was assumed that the oviraptor was an egg thief and it's bones were found on top of a protoceratops eggs and the mother protoceratops killed it.But the eggs turned out to be oviraptor babies instead.
You are ON FIRE this week.