• Question: what did the gigantoraptor eat?

    Asked by to Ben, Dave, Ditte, Heather, Rebecca on 23 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Ben White

      Ben White answered on 23 Jun 2014:


      It may be unexciting, but Gigantoraptor erlianensis may have been a herbivore. It’s therefore likely that G. erlianensis ate plants like Williamsonia, horsetails, and flowering plants; flowers had evolved ~70 million years before gigantorator is thought to have walked the earth.

    • Photo: Ditte Hedegaard

      Ditte Hedegaard answered on 23 Jun 2014:


      The gigantoraptor is a scary looking dinosaur, but they probably look a lot more scary than what they actually were. Investigation of gigantoraptor fossils suggest that they had toothless peaks, which are likely to have been used for eating flowers, plants and fruit, just like a lot of birds do today. Another large dinosaur which look like a bird is the Sinocalliopteryx, however this one is a proper meat eating dinosaur!

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