Carnivorous Dinosaurs Traded Tiny Eyes For a Harder Bite & More Latest News Here – Up Jobs

While there were many types of eye sockets observed in the fossil skulls, they can largely be broken down into two groups — dinosaurs with more regular, circular eye sockets, and those who had more unusually shaped, and often elongated sockets.

“The results show that only some dinosaurs had eye sockets that were elliptical or keyhole-shaped. However, all of those were large, carnivorous dinosaurs with skull lengths of 1 m or more.” said Dr. Lautenschlager.

The results of the study revealed that the majority of dinosaurs involved — including small species, juveniles, and herbivores — boasted circular eye sockets. However, the skulls of larger predatory dinosaurs that existed nearer the top of the food chain, such as the mighty Tyrannosaurus Rex, featured relatively small eyes with elliptical or figure-of-eight-shaped sockets.

This structural divergence seemed to be driven by the size of the carnivore’s skull, with nightmarishly large skulls being more likely to evolve the strangely-shaped sockets.

“In these species, just the upper part of the eye socket was actually occupied by the eyeball. This also led to a relative reduction of eye size compared with skull size,” explained Dr. Lautenschlager.

Computer simulated stress tests also revealed that dinosaur skulls with divergent eye sockets were better at managing the mechanical stresses of feeding on large prey compared to those whose skulls retained a circular socket.

In other words this evolutionary curveball allowed larger dinos to bite down harder without hurting themselves — a trait which is both useful and horrifying in equal measure. For more dinosaur talking points check out this article detailing the most ancient belly button ever discovered, and thank us later.

Anthony Wood is a freelance writer for IGN.

Article Image Credit: Shutterstock, Elisa Manzati