Sauropod Food Ecology: Insights from plant-animal co-occurrence, paleobotany, and evolutionary history of the Jurassic conifer Araucaria

蜥脚类动物食物生态学：植物与动物共生、古植物学和侏罗纪针叶树南洋杉进化史的见解

基本信息

批准号：
37087357
负责人：
Professor Dr. Volker Mosbrugger
金额：
--
依托单位：
Senckenberg Forschungsinstitut und Naturmuseum
依托单位国家：
德国
项目类别：
Research Units
财政年份：
2007
资助国家：
德国
起止时间：
2006-12-31 至 2010-12-31
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/37087357?language=en
关键词：
Sauropod Food Ecology Insights plant

项目摘要

The exciting research results on sauropod food ecology generated in the first and second funding periods of Research Unit 533 have opened new questions on the feeding efficiency of specific habitats for the sauropods, which may have led to the specialization of sauropod taxa on certain plant groups by or to habitat partitioning among sauropods in the mid-Mesozoic. To help answer these questions, additional in-vitro fermentation experiments are proposed here that will focus on the digestibility of Araucaria and Equisetum— both of which are thought to have been accessible, efficient, and preferred sources of food for the sauropods—as well as that of water plants, which may have been important food sources for sauropods in coastal environments. Empirical measurements of biomass yield, based on the intake volume of a sauropod’s mouthful, will be made using cropping trials on the nearest living relatives of the Mesozoic flora. Using these data, the analysis of feeding efficiency in specific habitats (e.g., an Equisetum marsh, an “open” meadow of ferns, an Araucaria forest, a mixed forest of Araucaria and other conifers, and a mixed ecosystem of ferns, cycads, ginkgoes, and conifers) can be undertaken. The continued study of cuticle and wood from a sauropod bonebed (the Howe-Stephens Quarry) in the Morrison Formation at the Howe- Stephens Quarry will add to the species diversity of plants in this Late Jurassic sauropod ecosystem.

533研究室第一期和第二期资助期间产生的关于蜥脚类动物食物生态学的令人兴奋的研究成果，对蜥脚类动物特定栖息地的摄食效率提出了新的问题，这可能导致蜥脚类动物类群在某些植物类群上的专业化为了帮助回答这些问题，这里提出了额外的体外发酵实验，重点关注南洋杉和中生代蜥脚类动物的消化率。木贼和水生植物都被认为是蜥脚类动物可获取、有效且首选的食物来源，而水生植物可能是沿海环境中蜥脚类动物的重要食物来源。基于蜥脚类动物一口的摄入量，将通过对中生代植物群最近的现存亲属进行种植试验，利用这些数据分析特定栖息地（例如，可以对木贼沼泽、蕨类植物“开放”草甸、南洋杉森林、南洋杉和其他针叶树的混交林以及蕨类植物、苏铁、银杏和针叶树的混合生态系统进行持续的角质层和木材研究。来自豪-斯蒂芬斯采石场莫里森组的蜥脚类骨床（豪-斯蒂芬斯采石场）将增加植物的物种多样性在这个晚侏罗世蜥脚类动物生态系统中。