Occurrence of fossil fungi in dinosaur dung and its implication on food habit

摘要

An investigation on the fossil dinosaur dung (Group A coprolite of Matley)1 exhibits an array of fungi that live on leaves as parasites, revealing thereby that some sauropod dinosaurs ate the leaves of various types of plants as food,Among the dinosaurs, the sauropods were the most dominant terrestrial herbivores. They were large but had weak peg-like teeth, which were thought to be suitable for chopping soft, aquatic plants. The Lameta Formation (Maastrichtian), exposed mostly in central and western India, is rich in dinosaurs. Of these, Tita-nosaurus Lydekker represents one-third of sauropod diversity and was widespread in India, Argentina, Madagascar, Europe and Laos and continued throughout the Cretaceous. However, Titanosaurusis an invalid genus and it has now been replaced by a new generic name Isisaurus.