What Plants Did Dinosaurs Really Eat?
Posted on: Wednesday, 6 February 2008, 10:15 CST Scientists from the University of Bonn are researching which plants giant dinosaurs could have lived off more than 100 million years ago. They want to find out how the dinosaurs were able to become as large as they did. In actual fact such gigantic animals should not have existed. The results of the research have now been published in the journal ‘Proceedings of the Royal Society B’. Take 200 milligrams of dried and ground equisetum, ten milliliters of digestive juice from sheep’s rumen, a few minerals, carbonate and water. Fill a big glass syringe with the mix, clamp this into a revolving drum and put the whole thing into an incubator, where the brew can rotate slowly. In this way you obtain the artificial ‘dinosaur rumen’. With this apparatus (also used as a ‘Menke gas production technique’ in assessing food for cows) Dr. Jürgen Hummel from the Bonn Institute of Animal Sciences (Bonner Institute für Tierwissenschaften) is investigating
