| Title |
Skull Ecomorphology of Megaherbivorous Dinosaurs from the Dinosaur Park Formation (Upper Campanian) of Alberta, Canada
|
|---|---|
| Published in |
PLOS ONE, July 2013
|
| DOI | 10.1371/journal.pone.0067182 |
| Pubmed ID | |
| Authors |
Jordan C. Mallon, Jason S. Anderson |
| Abstract |
Megaherbivorous dinosaur coexistence on the Late Cretaceous island continent of Laramidia has long puzzled researchers, owing to the mystery of how so many large herbivores (6-8 sympatric species, in many instances) could coexist on such a small (4-7 million km(2)) landmass. Various explanations have been put forth, one of which-dietary niche partitioning-forms the focus of this study. Here, we apply traditional morphometric methods to the skulls of megaherbivorous dinosaurs from the Dinosaur Park Formation (upper Campanian) of Alberta to infer the ecomorphology of these animals and to test the niche partitioning hypothesis. We find evidence for niche partitioning not only among contemporaneous ankylosaurs, ceratopsids, and hadrosaurids, but also within these clades at the family and subfamily levels. Consubfamilial ceratopsids and hadrosaurids differ insignificantly in their inferred ecomorphologies, which may explain why they rarely overlap stratigraphically: interspecific competition prevented their coexistence. |
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Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Canada | 6 | 16% |
| United Kingdom | 6 | 16% |
| United States | 4 | 11% |
| Japan | 2 | 5% |
| Brazil | 2 | 5% |
| Argentina | 1 | 3% |
| Indonesia | 1 | 3% |
| Singapore | 1 | 3% |
| Greece | 1 | 3% |
| Other | 1 | 3% |
| Unknown | 12 | 32% |
Demographic breakdown
| Type | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Members of the public | 28 | 76% |
| Scientists | 8 | 22% |
| Science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors) | 1 | 3% |
Mendeley readers
The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 82 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Mexico | 1 | 1% |
| United States | 1 | 1% |
| Sweden | 1 | 1% |
| Canada | 1 | 1% |
| Unknown | 78 | 95% |
Demographic breakdown
| Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Student > Ph. D. Student | 17 | 21% |
| Researcher | 15 | 18% |
| Student > Master | 12 | 15% |
| Student > Bachelor | 9 | 11% |
| Other | 5 | 6% |
| Other | 11 | 13% |
| Unknown | 13 | 16% |
| Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 30 | 37% |
| Earth and Planetary Sciences | 28 | 34% |
| Environmental Science | 4 | 5% |
| Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology | 3 | 4% |
| Computer Science | 1 | 1% |
| Other | 2 | 2% |
| Unknown | 14 | 17% |