An article was published in Current Biology magazine in which Utah Museum of History Keegan Melstrom and Randall Ayrmis reported on their unique find. They discovered the remains of the ancient ancestors of crocodiles, which, according to paleontologists, were vegetarians.
Scientists worked with more than 150 teeth of relatives of crocodiles living in the Jurassic period. These were the ancestors of alligators, crocodiles and gavilles living in our time. Scientists based their theory on the shape and morphological structure of the teeth found, which indicates that they only ate plant foods. It is worth noting that the teeth of carnivorous and herbivorous crocodiles have a different shape, configuration, morphological and chemical composition. This is due to the fact that animals performed different environmental roles.
Paleontologists believe that vegetarians were representatives of 3 or even 6 Crocodyliformes groups. They successfully survived the Triassic extinction period and successfully lived throughout the dinosaur era. Scientists are sure that representatives of the herbivorous Crocodyliformes disappeared in the Cretaceous, unable to withstand competition. Only carnivorous representatives of this group were able to survive, which now pose a huge threat to all predators living in our time.
There is a hypothesis that herbivorous crocodiles were initially doomed to extinction. However, not all paleontologists support this theory.To refute or confirm this hypothesis they still have in the future. We hope that we can read about this in the articles of scientific or journalistic journals.
