How can we determine whether an animal was herbivorous? Propose a hypothesis to explain why herbivory is limited to amniotes and their closest relatives
What will be an ideal response?
Herbivorous animals have broad cheek teeth for crushing vegetation and usually flat anterior teeth for cropping. The arrangement of muscles in the skull that allows for good gripping with the front teeth, essential for a herbivore, would not be possible in the flat skull seen in most non-amniote tetrapods (some more derived reptiliomorphs had a more amniote-like head shape). The flat skull is important for getting air into the lungs via buccal pumping; head shape cannot change, and thus jaw muscle arrangement cannot change, until the evolution of costal ventilation frees the head from its role in lung ventilation.
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