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3d ago

Rebuilt Jurassic Food Web Finds Baby Sauropods Fed Top Predators

Using fossil chemistry, tooth wear, isotopes, biomechanics, ecological modeling, a UCL-led team mapped thousands of feeding links at Colorado's Dry Mesa Quarry.

A reconstruction of a Late Jurassic Dry Mesa Dinosaur Quarry ecosystem around 150 million years ago which shows a diverse array of bipedal theropod dinosaurs including the largest in the ecosystem Torvosaurus (far right in the brown), alongside two Allosaurus in the center (green) hunting a Stegosaurus (green with red plates on its back), while Ceratosaurus and Marshosaurus prowl for food in a shallow stream and a Stokesosaurus pursues a small mammal, in the U.S. state of Colorado, in this illustration obtained by Reuters on January 28, 2026. University College London/Sergey Krasovskiy and Pedro Salas/Handout via REUTERS
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Overview

  • Published January 30 in the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin, the study reconstructs a high‑resolution food web from the Morrison Formation about 150 million years ago.
  • Evidence indicates hatchling and juvenile sauropods were abundant, poorly defended, and formed a dominant prey base for large theropods such as Allosaurus and Torvosaurus.
  • The Dry Mesa assemblage preserves at least six sauropod species alongside multiple carnivores, with the modeled network yielding more than 12,000 potential food chains.
  • The analysis identifies sauropods as ecological linchpins, linking to more plants and consumers than other herbivores like Stegosaurus in this localized ecosystem.
  • The authors propose—cautiously—that later declines in sauropods in North America may have shaped predator evolution, citing traits seen in Tyrannosaurus rex as a possible response.