A study of fossilized feces and vomit attempts to piece together why dinosaurs were so evolutionarily successful.

The new findings address a 30-million-year gap in our knowledge of dinosaur evolution during the first part of the Late Triassic period. “The research material was collected over 25 years. It took us many years to piece everything together into a coherent picture,

Hundreds of pieces of fossilised faeces and vomit show how dinosaurs became Earth’s dominant land animals — plus, the search for a commensal fungus that’s made mouse guts its home. A huge collection of fossilised digestive contents has provided clues as to how dinosaurs grew to become the dominant animals on the planet.

In an international collaboration, researchers at Uppsala University have been able to identify undigested food remains, plants and prey in the fossilized feces of dinosaurs. These analyses of hundreds of samples provide clues about the role dinosaurs played in the ecosystem around 200 million years ago.