Science News has a story about dinosaurs,  A new paper in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology reveals that some herbivorous dinosaurs were probably “picky” eaters.  By analyzing calcium isotopes in 150-million-year-old tooth enamel, the authors determined the diet of these dinosaurs depended more on nutritional value and texture of their food than the size of the animal.

“My big takeaway is that the herbivores had different diets, and it is likely that the parts of a plant that these animals eat [are] a more significant driver than height,” says Liam Norris, a paleontologist at the Texas Science & Natural History Museum in Austin. “So, if they are eating softer parts like leaves versus eating twigs or maybe bark, that looks like it is more significant.”

Norris and colleagues compared calcium isotope levels in dinosaur enamel with the levels in enamel from modern herbivores. The team found that the towering sauropod Camarasaurus ­— from the Late Jurassic period, between about 164 million and 145 million years ago, long thought to feed primarily from treetops — ate more woody plants and twigs than expected. But the smaller, beaked Camptosaurus preferred softer plant parts such as leaves and buds.