Dinosaur Food - Cycad Fossil

"Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es." [Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are].

-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, Physiologie Du Gout, ou, Méditations de Gastronomie Transcendante (1826)

The palm-shaped fronds of the Cycad plant are an iconic piece of the dinosaur landscape for good reason. These plants were an incredibly important food source to the largest land animals to ever walk the planet. Thanks to an incredibly efficient gut biome, herbivorous sauropods, ceratopsians, and all manner of dinosaurs were able to digest and absorb precious nutrients from this group of plants.

This specimen is a piece of a Cycad plant fossil, commonly known as "Dinosaur Food." The material was recovered from the Lance Formation in Wyoming and is estimated to be about 67,000,000 years old.