Weekly Dino Fact: Hadrosaurs’ Many Teeth

I thought you said I had THOUSANDS of teeth?!?

Today’s Weekly Dino Fact comes by way of Evil Optimas and Irvine too. Optimas asked the question, “What dino had the most teeth?” And Irvine answered correctly, Hadrosaurs did in fact have the most teeth!

Our scary, scary buddy T-Rex had about 50 to 60 knife-like, giant teeth. That may seem like a lot, and it was, for a carnivore, but Hadrosaurs had hundreds of tiny teeth packed into ‘dental batteries.’ Hadrosaurs could continuously regrow these tiny teeth and would have thousands throughout their lives. If you remember, a couple of Dino Facts ago, we profiled Hadrosaurs’ tooting ability and we mentioned the controversy about whether they were grazers or browsers, so it is not totally determined how Hadrosaurs used it’s many teeth. There was however, a recent study done at the University of Leicester that determined that Hadrosaurs’ jaws worked differently than those of any mammals today. Most animals today eat their food by moving their lower jaw that is attached to their upper jaw. If you think about it, your lower jaw is doing all of the work while everything else stays still. Move your lower jaw in a chewing motion now… see what I mean? In contrast, Hadrosaurs had a unique hinge between their upper jaw and the rest of their skulls. They chewed by moving their upper jaws outwards and sideways, while the lower jaw slid against it… Ummm I can’t even imagine what that would look like! What kind of freaky way of chewing were these crazy Hadrosaurs doing??? Hadrosaurs were truly incredible and mysterious beasts, I wish we had a couple of these guys still hanging around so that we could know more about their wacky ways of doing things, they’re quickly becoming one of my favorite dinos. What do you all think?