How do we know what dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures ate, based only on tiny fossil fragments?
Experts revealed last week how the use of a mechanical jaw and some fresh shellfish can be used to recreate the eating habits of long-extinct beasts.
The lives of sea dragons and other "marine weirdos" were bought graphically to life in the latest in the Cabinets of Curiosity lecture series at the National Museum of Ireland (archaeology and history), by experts Dr Michael Maisch and Dr Anne Schulp.
A reconstruction of the jaw of a mososaur was built using information from just "two jaw fragments and a handful of isolated teeth" by Schulp, curator of vertebrate palaeontology at the Maastricht Museum in the Netherlands. Little was known about the eating habits of this ancient sea creature however before Dr Schulp's innovative idea.
"We wanted to show that simple things and some creativity come up with some interesting answers," says Schulp. "To quote from Monty Python, 'You don't need the expensive machine that goes Ping!'"
By measuring the size of the tooth sockets, the experts were able to estimate the size of the teeth. They then "made rough calculations to work out from the musculature how much force it would have been able to create", Schulp explained.
The researchers used this data to create a mechanical jaw, and this in turn revealed that the mososaur would have been capable of eating small whelks and crabs, but that anything but the smallest squid would have proved "too rubbery", he continued.
The experts helped children to experience scientific research for themselves at the Enfo centre in Dublin last Saturday. The mechanical jaw was on hand for them to explore what force is required for the teeth to crush different shells and fish.
"There was a lot of interesting stuff going on under the waves," says Maisch, lecturer in palaeontology at the University of Tübingen in Germany. "This has been a neglected area of palaeontology for quite some time, but we're currently going through a renaissance of marine reptile research."
If you want to learn more about marine reptile fossils, there will be specimens to handle in the workshop in Enfo on Andrew Street, Dublin and a further exhibit at the National History Museum Dublin until Sunday, September 4th.
The Cabinets of Curiosity series is funded by the European Union and is a product of a joint programme between University College Dublin and the National Museum of Ireland's Division of Natural History (Collections-based Biology in Dublin, CoBiD).
The next lecture in the series is on September 1st. Professor Geerat Vermeij, from the University of California, Davis, will be talking about "The lessons of history: what shells teach us about our past and about our future." - Vikki Burns
For more information, see www.ucd.ie/cabinets or call 085-7372896