For details, see below.
Some 150 million years before the mythical events of ‘Creation Week’—give or take a few thousand years—our distant ancestors were small, nocturnal, rodent-like mammals eking out an existence in a world dominated by colossal reptiles. Among these dominant life forms were the dinosaurs, thriving in a variety of ecosystems and feeding on plants or other animals, depending on their species.
As they ate, they unwittingly left behind a record of their diet etched into the microscopic wear patterns on the enamel of their teeth. Today, with the help of sophisticated analytical techniques, palaeontologists can read these patterns like a diary of prehistoric meals. And with each new discovery, such as the one published by a team led by Dr Daniela E. Winkler of Kiel University, the yawning gap between ancient mythology and modern science widens ever further. Their findings provide yet another decisive refutation of the simplistic narrative crafted by Bronze Age storytellers—later compiled into what some still insist is the inerrant word of an omniscient creator.
This latest blow to creationist pseudoscience comes in the form of an open-access paper, Dental microwear texture analysis reveals behavioural, ecological and habitat signals in Late Jurassic sauropod dinosaur faunas, published in Nature Ecology & Evolution.
The team focused on the teeth of sauropods—long-necked herbivorous dinosaurs such as Camarasaurus, Brachiosaurus, and Diplodocus — from the Late Jurassic Morrison Formation in North America and the Lusitanian Basin in Portugal. Using a method called Dental Microwear Texture Analysis (DMTA), they examined the microscopic wear patterns caused by feeding, revealing a fascinating spectrum of dietary strategies and environmental adaptations among different species.
What they found demolishes the notion of sauropods as a homogenous group of giant leaf-munchers. Instead, the microwear textures show distinct differences in feeding behaviour, likely linked to differences in available vegetation and habitat. For example, Camarasaurus appears to have consumed tougher, more fibrous plant material—perhaps conifers—while others such as Diplodocus may have specialised in softer vegetation like ferns or aquatic plants. These variations not only suggest niche partitioning, where species avoid direct competition by diversifying their diets, but also point to distinct ecological zones across the ancient landscapes they inhabited.
Even more telling is the comparison between North American and European sauropods. Despite being closely related, the differences in their dental microwear suggest adaptations to different environmental pressures and available flora, implying behavioural flexibility and evolutionary divergence shaped by their respective habitats.
Such complexity and diversity, preserved for over 150 million years in the microscopic textures of fossilised teeth, are a world away from the simplistic narratives of static 'kinds' created in a single week. Instead, we see a dynamic, evolving biosphere responding to ecological challenges—exactly what we’d expect in a world governed by natural selection and deep time.
What is Dental Microwear Texture Analysis (DMTA)? Dental Microwear Texture Analysis (DMTA) is a high-resolution technique used by palaeontologists to infer the diets of extinct animals by examining microscopic wear patterns on their teeth.The study, also summarised in a news release by the Leibniz Institute, reveals what the teeth of Late Jurassic sauropods can tell us about their behaviour, diet, and habitats.
As animals chew, tiny scratches, pits, and gouges form on the enamel surfaces of their teeth. These wear marks are influenced by the type of food consumed — for example, soft leaves cause different wear than tough, fibrous plants or gritty materials like dirt-coated vegetation.
DMTA involves:
- 3D surface scanning of the tooth enamel using confocal microscopy or white-light interferometry.
- Quantitative analysis of surface textures using statistical tools that measure roughness, complexity, and directionality of the microwear patterns.
- Comparison with modern analogues — living animals with known diets—to infer what extinct species were likely eating.
Unlike traditional methods that rely on tooth shape alone, DMTA captures actual feeding behaviour shortly before the animal died, offering a snapshot of its recent diet — and sometimes even seasonal changes.
In the case of sauropod dinosaurs, this means scientists can now distinguish between species that grazed on ground vegetation, browsed treetops, or fed in wetter environments, helping to reconstruct entire ecosystems from the Jurassic Period.
What Dinosaur Teeth Reveal About Life 150 Million Years Ago
What did long-necked dinosaurs eat – and where did they roam to satisfy their hunger? A team of researchers has reconstructed the feeding behaviour of sauropods using cutting-edge dental wear analysis. Their findings, published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, show that microscopic enamel wear marks provide surprising insights into migration, environmental conditions, and niche distribution within ecosystems from 150 million years ago.
How did massive dinosaurs live during the Jurassic period? What did they eat, how did they share their habitats – and did they perhaps migrate seasonally? These questions have been explored by an international team of researchers led by Dr Daniela E. Winkler, a postdoctoral researcher at Kiel University, Dr Emanuel Tschopp, visiting scientist at the LIB and research associate at Freie Universität Berlin, and André Saleiro, PhD student at NOVA University Lisbon. Their new study employs an unusual method: using wear marks on fossilised teeth as a window into the past.
I still find it fascinating that microscopic scratches on fossil teeth can tell us so much about diet and even behaviour.
Dr Daniela E. Winkler, co-lead author
Zoological Institute
Kiel University, Kiel, Germany.
The technique, known as Dental Microwear Texture Analysis (DMTA), was originally developed by a research group led by LIB scientist Professor Thomas Kaiser for studying mammals. The current study, published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, marks the first systematic application of the method to sauropods. The analyses were carried out in the laboratories of the LIB.
Tooth Enamel as an Environmental Archive
The team analysed 322 high-resolution 3D scans of tooth surfaces from three geological formations that are famous for their dinosaur fossils: the Lourinhã Formation in Portugal, the Morrison Formation in the USA, and the Tendaguru Formation in Tanzania. All the teeth came from a total of 39 individuals. Samples were taken directly from original teeth or from high-resolution silicone moulds.
We’re talking about structures at the micrometre scale. These tiny wear marks results from the interaction between tooth and food – they reveal what the animals had eaten in the last days or weeks of their lives.
Dr Daniela E. Winkler
Surprising Differences between Species and Regions
The statistical analyses revealed clear differences between various sauropod groups and their localities oder geographic regions. Particularly striking was the high variability in wear patterns among the flagellicaudatans – a group of long-tailed sauropods that includes the well-known Diplodocus. This heterogeneity suggests that these animals had access to a variety of food sources and displayed generalist feeding behaviour.
A particular surprise was that Camarasaurus specimens from both Portugal and the USA had highly uniform wear patterns. Such consistency in microwear is unlikely to be explained solely by uniform plant availability – rather, it indicates that these dinosaurs deliberately sought out the same preferred food sources throughout the year.
The climate at the time in both Portugal and the USA was highly seasonal, so certain plants likely weren’t available year-round. The consistency in Camarasaurus tooth wear suggests they may have migrated seasonally to access the same resources.
Dr Emanuel Tschopp, co-lead author.
Centre for Taxonomy and Morphology
Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change
Museum of Nature, Hamburg, Germany.
Things were different with the titanosauriforms from Tanzania, whose teeth showed significantly more intense and complex wear. The researchers interpret this as a result of specific environmental conditions: the Tendaguru Formation featured tropical to semi-arid climates and nearby was a large desert belt, from where quartz sand was probably often blown onto plants these sauropods ate. This sand-contaminated diet likely caused the highly abrasive wear patterns seen on the teeth.
Climate, Not Plant Variety, as the Key Factor
There were also clear differences between the regions themselves: teeth from Tanzania were consistently more heavily worn than those from Portugal or the USA. The crucial influencing factor? Climate.
For Emanuel Tschopp, this is also one of the most exciting elements of the research:One of the most interesting aspects of this work is that we were able to relate differences in dental wear patterns to palaeogeography and the habitat preferences of different sauropod faunas. The study showed me how to approach my ongoing work on niche partitioning in herbivorous dinosaurs – by focusing on specific palaeo-environments to better understand the ecological relationships within species groups, and how these differences evolved across ecosystems.
André Saleiro, co-author
GeoBioTec, NOVA School of Science and Technology
University NOVA of Lisbon
Caparica, Portugal.With these microscopic traces, we can suddenly make behavioural statements about these enormous extinct animals. Migration, specialisation, niche use – it all becomes tangible.
Dr Emanuel Tschopp.
Another notable aspect: wear patterns differed depending on the area of the tooth – on the side (buccal) or on the chewing surface (occlusal). These differences were accounted for in the analysis to avoid distortion.
Relevance for Biodiversity Research
This study provides not only new insights into the lives of individual dinosaur species but also contributes to a broader understanding of palaeoecological relationships. Niche partitioning, climate-driven adaptations, and potential competition avoidance can thus be identified even in fossilised ecosystems.
We demonstrate that ecological principles like niche formation and migration behaviour were important not just today, but already 150 million years ago.
Dr Daniela E. Winkler
The sauropods of the Morrison Formation show enormous species diversity – and that diversity was only possible because the species behaved differently and occupied different dietary niches.
Dr Emanuel Tschopp.
Looking Ahead: More Teeth, More Knowledge
The research is far from over. Future studies aim to explore whether juvenile and adult sauropods differed in their diets, or how dwarf species such as Europasaurus from Lower Saxony adapted to their specific island environment. Saleiro is already working on an expanded dataset for the Portuguese fauna, including other herbivorous dinosaurs.
What excites me is that we can keep refining this method – and every new sample adds another piece to the puzzle.
Dr Daniela E. Winkler
Our tools are getting better – and so is our understanding of what life back then was really like. We’re still at the beginning with this method – but combining palaeontology, modern technology and interdisciplinary collaboration opens up fascinating insights into ancient worlds.
Dr Emanuel Tschopp.
Original publication:
AbstractEvolution Written in Tooth Enamel
Most faunas from the Mesozoic era were dominated by sauropod dinosaurs, the largest terrestrial animals to ever exist. These megaherbivores were remarkably diverse and widely distributed. Here we study three Late Jurassic faunas from the USA, Portugal and Tanzania, each approximately 150 million years old, which are known for their extreme sauropod diversity. Whereas general taxonomic composition was similar in these three faunas, the major clades differed in relative abundance. Moreover, their depositional strata record distinct climatic regimes. Using dental microwear texture analysis, we investigated the impact of these climate regimes and the resulting food availability on the different sauropod taxa. Wear patterns in camarasaurid macronarians show minimal variation across different climate regimes, supporting previous studies suggesting that these animals migrated to follow their preferred climate niche and food source. North American camarasaurids show similar wear patterns to those of Portuguese turiasaurs, another broad-crowned taxon, which did not exist in the Jurassic of North America. By contrast, where camarasaurids and turiasaurs co-occurred in Portugal, their microwear patterns are distinct, suggesting niche differentiation to avoid ecological competition between these two clades. Flagellicaudatan diplodocoids display highly variable wear patterns, indicating limited migration (and therefore seasonal variation in diet), which aligns with observed biogeography patterns in the USA. Early-branching titanosauriforms show highly distinct wear patterns between different climate regimes, which can probably be attributed to different abrasive loads in the respective habitats. Our results demonstrate that dental microwear texture analysis not only records dietary preferences but also reveals behaviour such as competition and migration related to dietary niches in past ecosystems.
Main
Late Jurassic ecosystems across the planet were dominated by sauropod dinosaurs in terms of size and body mass contribution1. The three best-known and represented Late Jurassic faunas are from the USA, Tanzania and Portugal. These sauropod faunas had very similar taxonomic compositions, with brachiosaurid macronarians and diplodocoids occurring in all three. The North American and Portuguese faunas furthermore shared the presence of camarasaurid macronarians, whereas turiasaurs and early somphospondylans occur both in Portugal and Tanzania. The Tanzanian fauna further included non-neosauropod mamenchisaurids2,3,4,5,6,7, which are otherwise primarily known from the Jurassic of Asia8,9,10,11. Although generally similar, within-clade species diversity and the abundance of individuals from the distinct taxa are different between the three faunas. Whereas camarasaurid macronarians and diplodocid diplodocoids dominated in the USA12,13,14,15, brachiosaurid titanosauriforms and dicraeosaurid diplodocoids predominated in Tanzania5,16 and turiasaurs in Portugal17,18. The reasons for these unequal distributions of taxon abundance remain poorly understood.
As the largest terrestrial megaherbivores that ever roamed the Earth, sauropods must have greatly depended on plant productivity and availability. Similarly to sauropods, major plant groups were distributed globally during the Late Jurassic, with conifers forming the canopy together with ginkgoes. Tree ferns reached intermediate heights, whereas other ferns, seed ferns, cycads and horsetails usually composed the understorey. The only notable difference between the floras of the three sauropod-bearing formations was the absence of the conifer clade Pinaceae and of horsetails in Tendaguru, where also cycads were a comparatively minor component of the plant cover19,20,21. Moreover, the relative abundance of the different plant clades differed between the three biomes21, which was correlated to distinct climate regimes.
Palaeoclimatic reconstructions indicate different climatic conditions in these three regions during the Late Jurassic20,22,23,24,25. The western USA was reconstructed as semi-arid to arid, with a mean annual temperature ranging between 12 °C and 30 °C, depending on latitude22,25 and probably strong seasonality24. Mean annual precipitation was found to be higher in Portugal and Tanzania compared with the USA, suggesting a more humid climate than in the USA24,25. In Portugal, mean annual temperature ranged between 18 °C and 24 °C, whereas it was considerably warmer, with 24–30 °C, in Tanzania25. Seasonality was probably strong in Tanzania as well, with wet winters22,26 and dry summers20, corresponding to a monsoon-type climate25. We hypothesize that these different climate regimes probably controlled forage availability, which in turn shaped distribution and abundance of different sauropod taxa adapted for foraging on specific plant taxa. Furthermore, we propose that large-bodied herbivores in such habitats affected by seasonality either adopted a generalist feeding strategy, using diverse dietary resources in the same place year-round, or depended upon seasonal migration if they had a narrower dietary niche.
Strong niche partitioning between major sauropod groups has been suggested on the basis of their distinct skull shapes and tooth morphologies, and the posture of the neck and forelimbs7,18,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40. However, morphology can provide only general information about possible feeding adaptations and is not direct evidence whether a certain dietary resource was actually exploited. A promising avenue to assess niche partitioning in sauropods and other archosaurs is the study of dental microwear as a dietary proxy35,41,42,43,44,45,46. We here use three-dimensional dental microwear texture analysis (DMTA), a semi-automated quantitative approach to evaluate microscopic surface wear of enamel wear facets47,48, as a means to test whether distinct sauropod taxa occupied the same niche in three different geographical areas (Fig. 1) irrespective of climate, and how these food preferences and availability may have shaped sauropod distribution during the Late Jurassic period.
Fig. 1: Sauropod diversity and tooth morphology at the sampled locations.
a, Palaeogeographic map showing the approximate arrangements of continents during the Late Jurassic. Yellow star, North America (Morrison Formation); blue star, Portugal (Lourinhã Formation); and red star, Tanzania (Tendaguru Formation). Silhouettes represent major taxonomic groups of sauropods present in the sampled locations. Taxa that were not available for inclusion into the current study from the respective locations are shown in light grey, those included in the analysis are shown in colour. b, Tooth morphologies for selected clades and phylogenetic tree. All clades except possibly Somphospondyli and Mamenchisauridae could be sampled for the current study. The indeterminate sauropods and macronarians sampled in this study could not be attributed to a less-inclusive clade. Tooth morphologies are shown for well-represented clades (from left to right, Turiasauria, Titanosauriformes, Camarasauridae, Flagellicaudata). Teeth are shown in lingual and buccal view. Approximate sampling areas for occlusal and buccal surfaces are shown in camarasaurid and turiasaur teeth, respectively (grey arrows). Credits: a, Maps are taken from The Paleobiology Database Navigator (https://paleobiodb.org/navigator/) under a CC BY 4.0 license, which uses GPlates as a data source for the maps. GPlates are shared under the GNU software general public license, v.2 (https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html). a,b, Silhouettes are from Phylopic (https://phylopic.org). Xinjiangtitan shanshanesis (Mamenchisauridae), created by Jagged Fang Designs under a CC0 1.0 license; Haplocanthosaurus priscus, created by T. M. Keesey under a CC0 1.0 license; Amanzia greppini (Turiasauria), created by T. Dixon under a CC BY 4.0 license; Euhelopus zdanskyi (Somphospondyli), created by DiBgd and modified by T. M. Keesey under CC BY-SA 3.0 license; Giraffatitan brancai (Brachiosauridae), created by S. Hartman under a CC BY 3.0 license; Diplodocus carnegii (Flagellicaudata), created by S. Hartman under a CC BY 3.0 license; Camarasaurus supremus (Camarasauridae), created by M. Wedel under a CC BY 3.0 license. Tooth shapes are modified from ref. 18, Wiley.
Winkler, Daniela E.; Tschopp, Emanuel; Saleiro, André; Wiesinger, Ria; Kaiser, Thomas M.
Dental microwear texture analysis reveals behavioural, ecological, and habitat signals in Late Jurassic sauropod dinosaur faunas
Nature Ecology and Evolution (2025) DOI: 10.1038/s41559-025-02794-5
Copyright: © 2025 The authors.
Published by Springer Nature Ltd. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)
What this study reveals is a level of ecological nuance and evolutionary adaptation that no creationist narrative can accommodate. The worn enamel of sauropod teeth is more than just fossilised biology; it’s a direct record of life responding to its environment over geological timescales. Different sauropods developed different feeding strategies—not because they were designed that way from the outset, but because natural selection favoured traits that helped them survive in diverse and changing habitats.
These are the kind of subtle, testable patterns that evolutionary science thrives on, and which Biblical creationism cannot explain. The Genesis account speaks only of fixed 'kinds' and a static creation, but DMTA shows us instead a world of **adaptive radiation**, **niche partitioning**, and **geographical divergence**—all hallmarks of evolutionary processes acting over millions of years.
It also highlights the absurdity of young-Earth creationist claims. According to their timeline, all life was created just a few thousand years ago, with dinosaurs supposedly roaming the Earth alongside humans—or perishing in a global flood that conveniently left behind no credible evidence of such an event. Yet here we have 150-million-year-old data, locked in the enamel of teeth, telling us not only what these animals ate, but how they lived in environments that no longer exist.
In the end, the fossil record continues to whisper truths that contradict sacred texts: that life is ancient, diverse, and ever-changing. That species emerge, adapt, and sometimes disappear. And that every tooth, every stratum, every microscopic groove is a page in a deep and glorious evolutionary history—one that owes nothing to myth and everything to evidence.
Choose Evidence, Not Myth
In a world where science continues to uncover the intricate details of our planet's deep past—right down to the wear patterns on a dinosaur’s tooth—clinging to ancient myths over demonstrable evidence is not just misguided; it's a wilful rejection of knowledge. Creationism offers no explanations, makes no predictions, and cannot be tested. It demands unquestioning belief in spite of the evidence.
Science, on the other hand, invites us to question, to test, to learn. It builds a picture of the past not from dogma, but from data—data that anyone with the curiosity and tools can examine for themselves. Whether it’s the DNA we carry, the fossils beneath our feet, or the microscopic textures etched into teeth, the message is the same: life evolves, and the Earth is very old.
It's time to move beyond comforting fables and embrace the reality that evidence reveals. Evolution isn’t just a theory—it’s the foundation of modern biology and our best explanation for the diversity and complexity of life. The choice is clear: mythology or method, faith or fact, dogma or discovery.
Choose science.
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