For Immediate Release Contact: Greg Borzo (312) 665-7100 (For Media Use Only) gborzo@fieldmuseum.org Field Museum’s new dinosaur expert publishes findings in Nature Describes unusual feeding in carnivorous dinosaur CHICAGO – An extremely well-preserved, 70-million-year-old fossil found in the Gobi Desert by Peter Makovicky – The Field Museum’s new assistant curator of dinosaurs – has shed light on what an ostrich-like dinosaur ate and where it lived. The find occurred while Dr. Makovicky was participating in a paleontological expedition conducted last summer by the American Museum of Natural History and the Mongolian Academy of Sciences. Dr. Makovicky, who joined The Field Museum last month from AMNH, co-authored a paper in Nature Aug. 30, 2001, describing rare soft tissue that was preserved in two dinosaur fossils. The fossil Dr. Makovicky found includes a thin, comb-like structure on the beak that had never before been seen in a dinosaur. The structure is similar to the filter-feeding beak of a contemporary duck’s bill. It indicates that these toothless dinosaurs may have eaten by straining tiny invertebrates and other food particles from water and sediment. The plate was found in Gallimimus bullatus, an ornithomimid or bird-like dinosaur with a small head. Ornithomimids are sleek creatures that resemble an ostrich with a long tail. Their long legs make them some of the fastest-running dinosaurs. Gallimimus stood about 7-feet tall but was 15-feet long – a very large animal to be straining miniscule food particles from the bottoms of streams and ponds. The specimen found by Dr. Makovicky is not fully grown, however, and was only about half that size. Ornithomimids belong to a group of dinosaurs called theropods, the carnivorous dinosaurs that include Tyrannosaurus rex, Velociraptor mongoliensis, and living birds. Along with Oviraptors and birds, ornithomimids are the only toothless theropods. "We are used to conceiving of theropods as dinosaurs with big teeth adapted to hunting large prey, but these beaked theropods adapted very differently and may have lived on tiny invertebrates similar to brine shrimp," Dr. Makovicky says. "Present day birds are theropods that have adapted to a wide range of habitats and foods, so it makes sense that theropods adapted widely in the age of dinosaurs, too," he adds. An illustration of what Gallimimus bullatus might have looked like and how the 15-foot ornithomimid might have eaten by filtering tiny invertebrates and other food particles from water and sediment. Continue