New dinosaur’s skull hints at a parrot-like fruit diet

A newly described dinosaur had a jaw-muscle arrangement resembling that of fruit-eating parrots, offering a clue to what it ate. Researchers describe Infernogallus jamesi in a Nature Communications paper published October 10.

The fossil preserves a nearly complete skull with its bones still connected—the first reported for caenagnathids, the dinosaur group to which it belongs. Its unusual jaw anatomy led the authors to infer a specialized plant-based diet, likely rich in fleshy fruit.

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