科普知识学英语 科学家发现新品种食草恐龙.docVIP

A South Dakota School of Mines Technology assistant professor and his team have discovered a new species of?herbivorous（食草的）?dinosaur and today published the first fossil evidence of prehistoric crocodyliforms feeding on small dinosaurs. Research by Clint Boyd, Ph.D., provides the first definitive evidence that plant-eating baby?ornithopod（鸟脚亚目恐龙）?dinosaurs were a food of choice for the crocodyliform, a now extinct relative of the crocodile family. While conducting their research, the team also discovered that this dinosaur prey was a previously unrecognized species of a small ornithopod dinosaur, which has yet to be named. ? The evidence found in what is now known as the Grand Staircase Escalante-National Monument in southern Utah dates back to the late Cretaceous period, toward the end of the age of dinosaurs, and was published today in the online journal PLOS ONE. The complete research findings of Boyd and Stephanie K. Drumheller, of the University of Iowa and the University of Tennessee, and Terry A. Gates, of North Carolina State University and the Natural History Museum of Utah, can be accessed online (see journal reference below). ? A large number of mostly tiny bits of dinosaur bones were recovered in groups at four locations within the Utah park -- which paleontologists and geologists know as the Upper Cretaceous (Campanian) Kaiparowits Formation -- leading?paleontologists（古生物学者）?to believe that crocodyliforms had fed on baby dinosaurs 1-2 meters in total length. ? Evidence shows bite marks on bone joints, as well as breakthrough proof of a crocodyliform tooth still embedded in a dinosaur femur. ? The findings are significant because historically dinosaurs have been depicted as the dominant species. The traditional ideas you see in popular literature are that when little baby dinosaurs are either coming out of a nesting grounds or out somewhere on their own, they are normally having to worry about the theropod dinosaurs, the things like raptors or, on bigg