Question: how do scientists know what dinosaurs ate like if they are herbivores or carnivores

Jake answered on 2 Dec 2020:

That’s a great question! When we want to know what living animals eat we just have to watch them, but for extinct animals it’s a lot more difficult. One of the best ways to work out what something ate is to look at its teeth! Animals that eat meat tend to have quite pointy teeth for tearing up flesh, while animals that eat plants usually have flat teeth for grinding. Animals that eat both meat and plants tend to have a mix of different kinds of teeth (like we do!) We can also look at fossilised poo (sometimes called coprolites) which might contain bits of whatever the animal that made it was eating. Scientists might even find a skeleton with food still in it’s stomach, although that’s really rare!