Week 3 Vocab: Eating

Serrations

Small sharp bumps on a predator's tooth (e.g. tyrannosaurids) that are arranged

in a line that usually runs from the tip to the

base of the tooth.

Frugivore

Animal that primarily eats fruit.

Piscivore

Specialized carnivores that

primarily eat fish.

Insectivore

Specialized carnivores that

primarily eat insects.

Omnivore

Animals that eat significant amounts of both meat and plants

Durophagy

The eating behaviour of animals adapted to crush bones.

Resorption

When bones and teeth are broken down while an animal is alive and the minerals are transferred back into the blood

Dental Battery

Dense arrangement of teeth found in the jaws of

hadrosaurs and ceratopsians

Dentine

Hard tissue that helps to form teeth.

Gastroliths

Small masses of little stones found in ribcages of some herbivorous dinosaurs. Form part of the 'gastric mill' that helps some dinosaurs and birds grind up plant matter.

Dromaeosaurs

A group of theropods with an enlarged and sickle-shaped claw on each foot and stiffened tails; lived during the Cretaceous period; examples: Velociraptor, Utahraptor, Deinonychus.

Spinosaurs

A group of theropods with skulls

that strongly resemble those of crocodiles. Thought to be piscivores.

Alvarezsaurs

A group of small theropods with short front limbs and compact hands. Alvarezasaurs are thought to have been insectivores.

Tyrannosaurs

A group of theropods that evolved late in the history of dinosaurs and have reduced front limbs and robust skulls, with large serrated teeth.

Scavenging

The consumption of an already dead animal by a carnivore that did not play a part in killing it.

Cololites.

Fossil gut contents.

Coprolites

Fossil poop!