What did dinosaurs eat?
Teeth, jaws, fossil poo and even last meals tell us what was on the menu.
- HerbivorePlant-eater
Plant-eaters munched ferns, cycads, conifers and (later) flowers. Most dinosaurs were plant-eaters!
Herbivorous dinosaurs evolved many ways to process tough plants: beaks for cropping, tooth batteries for grinding, and possibly gastroliths and huge fermenting guts to break down cellulose.
26 on DinoVerse:
Amargasaurus, Ankylosaurus, Apatosaurus, Argentinosaurus, Borealopelta, Brachiosaurus, Centrosaurus, Corythosaurus and 18 more
- CarnivoreMeat-eater
Meat-eaters hunted other animals or ate dead ones they found. They had sharp teeth and claws.
Carnivorous theropods had blade-like, serrated teeth (ziphodont) that sliced flesh. Bite marks, healed wounds on prey bones and coprolites full of bone show how they fed.
17 on DinoVerse:
Allosaurus, Archaeopteryx, Carnotaurus, Coelophysis, Compsognathus, Deinonychus, Dilophosaurus, Dimetrodon and 9 more
- OmnivoreEats plants and meat
Omnivores ate a bit of everything — plants, eggs, insects and small animals.
Several theropod groups, such as oviraptorosaurs and ornithomimids, lost their teeth and grew beaks, a sign of a broad diet that may have included plants, seeds and small prey.
2 on DinoVerse:
- PiscivoreFish-eater
Fish-eaters caught slippery fish with long snouts and pointy teeth, like crocodiles today.
Spinosaurids had long, narrow jaws with cone-shaped, unserrated teeth suited to gripping fish; Baryonyx was even found with partly digested fish scales in its stomach region.
6 on DinoVerse:
Baryonyx, Elasmosaurus, Ichthyosaurus, Pteranodon, Rhamphorhynchus, Spinosaurus
Teeth tell the story
Look at a tooth and you can often guess the diet. Hover or tap a tooth to see who it belonged to.
Blade with saw edges
Slicing and crunching meat and bone
e.g. Tyrannosaurus rexCone (no saw edge)
Gripping slippery fish
e.g. SpinosaurusPencil / peg
Raking leaves off branches
e.g. DiplodocusLeaf-shaped
Chopping soft plants
e.g. StegosaurusGrinding battery
Grinding tough plants like a mill
e.g. Edmontosaurus
Tooth drawings: simplified DinoVerse illustrations (CC0), not to scale.
The food chain
Energy from the Sun is stored in plants, passed to plant-eaters, then to meat-eaters. Each step up there's less energy — that's why there were always far more plant-eaters than T. rexes!
How do we know?
- Tooth shape and wear
Sharp blades for meat, pegs and grinders for plants. Scratches on teeth show what was chewed. - Coprolites
Fossil poo! A T. rex coprolite from Canada was packed with crushed bone. - Gastroliths
Stomach stones were found with some dinosaurs. Whether they helped grind food is still debated. - Stomach contents
Rare fossils keep a last meal — Borealopelta's stomach held ferns and charcoal. - Bite marks
Tooth marks on bones show who bit whom, like T. rex bites on Triceratops.