Dinosaur Dinners

At https://phys.org/print450700415.html … a team of scientists grew dinosaur era palnts in an atmosphere with high co2 levels which is thought to reproduced the atmospheric conditions similar to those the sauropods lumbered around in. There is a bit circular reasoning going on here as the idea higher co2 levels = higher temperatures on earth is far from a proven fact. Be that as it may the research has proved interesting as they also created an artificial fermentation system to simulate digestion of the plant leaves. The findings are published in Palaeontology journal and it seems the plants had higher energy levels than predicted – meaning higher co2 doesn't necessarily mean a loss of nutritional value. In fact, co2 is what causes plants to grow – or causes them to be grow more lush. Exta co2 simply creates more growth. It is thought the sauropods may have become more bulky as plants become less nutritious and they had to consume lots more of them – b ut apparently this has been debunked. The down side is that higher co2 levels may not really have existed to the extent theorised.