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Faeces and vomit fossils from dinosaurs reveal how the animals evolved to rule Earth. The study, which was published in Nature on 27 November, analysed hundreds of pieces of fossilized digestive material, called bromalites, to reconstruct what dinosaurs ate and how this changed1. The fossils reveal that the rise of the dinosaurs, over millions of years during the Triassic period, was influenced by factors including climate change and other species’ extinction.
“Our study shows that you can use pretty seemingly unremarkable fossils to get pretty remarkable results,” says co-author Martin Qvarnström, who studies early dinosaur evolution at Uppsala University in Sweden.
Palaeontologists have come up with differing theories for how dinosaurs became the dominant species on Earth. Dinosaurs might have overtaken their rivals because they were particularly able to adapt to a changing ecosystem, for instance, or because random environmental changes favoured them over other species. But there isn’t a single hypothesis that fully explains their rise to dominance.