Bonn scientists simulate dinosaur digestion ...(r out of the syringes. Jrgen Hummel can ...),Health

These old plants stand their ground surprisingly well compared to today's flora. 'The difference is not as great as might be expected,' Jrgen Hummel emphasises. The bacteria digest ginkgo even better than foliage, but they seem to prefer equisetum most. With it gas production is even higher than with some grasses. Nevertheless, equisetum figures in the diet of comparatively few animals. The reason is that in addition to the toxins present in many modern species it wears down animals teeth too much. 'Equisetum contains a lot of silicates,' Jrgen Hummel says. 'It acts like sand paper.'

However, many dinosaurs did not have any molars at all. They just pulled up their food and gulped it down. The mechanical break-up may have been carried out by a gastric mill. Similar to today's birds, dinosaurs may have swallowed stones with which they ground the food to a paste with their muscular stomach. However, there are no clear indications of this. Only recently the Bonn palaeontologist Dr. Oliver Wings doubted that dinosaurs had bezoar stones, at least this assumption could not be verified from fossil findings.

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