New research from Dr Schmitz at the University of California, reported recently by the BBC, suggests that contrary to what was believed - that most dinosaurs were diurnal - in fact some dinosaurs seemed to be active at a variety of times both during the day and at night.
Studies of the eyes of existing birds and reptiles with different daily activity patterns were compared with similar parts in dinosaur fossils. The results suggest that small, meat-eating dinosaurs were nocturnal while large plant-eating dinosaurs tended to forage both during the day and at night.
Dr Schmitz has been trying to determine just how big and light-sensitive dinosaurs’ eyes would have been. Finding this out would be an indication of whether they were active at night as well as during the day.
The reason why the larger animals needed to forage longer, that is both day and night, was in order to eat enough to support their enormous frames.
Dr Schmitz said “‘we have to do a lot more research to understand how nocturnality in mammals evolved”.
