( the largest herbivore. For their inves...)Dinosaurs -- stones did not help with digestion

After the ostriches had been slaughtered, the scientists investigated the gastric stones. It became clear that they wore out quickly in the muscular stomach and were not polished. On the contrary, the surface of the stones, which had been partly smooth, became rough in the stomachs during the experiments. The mass of the stones then corresponded on average to one per cent of the body mass of the birds.

'Whereas occasionally stones were found together with sauropod skeletons, we don't think they are remains of a gastric mill such as occurs in birds,' Dr. Sander comments. In that kind of gastric mill the stones would have been very worn and would not have a smoothly polished surface. Apart from that, gastric stones are not discovered regularly at sauropod sites. When present, their mass is, in relation to the body size, much less than with birds. 'In comparing these we extrapolate over four orders of magnitude, from an ostrich weighing 89 kilograms to a sauropod weighing 50,000 kilograms. This may seem a bit daring. However, within birds the range of body weight and corresponding masses of gastric stones also spans four orders of magnitude, from the 17 gram robin to the ostrich,' says Oliver Wings, who moved from Bonn University to Tübingen only recently.

Yet what else were the dinosaurs' gastric stones used for? The researchers presume that they were accidentally eaten with their food or could have been swallowed on purpose to improve the intake of minerals. But if the stones did not help to crush vegetable food, the sauropods' digestive system must have used other methods, since the decomposition of large amounts of material which is difficult to digest requires the assistance of bacteria in the digestive system. The smaller the pieces are, the better they ca
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Source:University of Bonn