Question

Describe chewing as practiced by ceratopsian dinosaurs.

Answer 1

The horned dinosaurs, also known as ceratopsians, are fascinating to paleontologists for their unusual jaws and dentition, Large spaces on the skule for jaw muscles meant a Powerful bére. A sharp beat helped to lop off plants. Once the plants were in the mouth, they met the teeth and here is where things get even more interesting. Ceratopsian Allth showed a lot of variation across the group's evolutic The earliest members had simple, oual teeth with a slightly angled cutting surface, probably for simple slicing of plants. Some later species developed a shelf line surface across the teeth, perhaps better suited for grinding plants into bits. Finally the largest species had closedy packed teeth that formed a contenous vertical cutting surface along the whole thath row - similar to a pair of Beinsors. most studies of ceratopsian chewing to date have used basic principles of physics (treating a jaw as levet system) along with examination of over all tooth and jaw muscle blacement to infer chewing styles in ceratopsians. These have provided plenty of solid information of horned movements, but were largely limited by independent tests of gaw muscle movement alnosaur To LeslScanned_uzith CamScanner