{"id":1076,"date":"2014-04-17T14:12:13","date_gmt":"2014-04-17T19:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=1076"},"modified":"2014-04-24T14:28:40","modified_gmt":"2014-04-24T19:28:40","slug":"early-plant-eaters-evolved-from-tiny-meat-eaters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/early-plant-eaters-evolved-from-tiny-meat-eaters\/","title":{"rendered":"Early plant-eaters evolved from tiny meat-eaters<img src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/canada_flag_icon_small.gif\">"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_1077\" style=\"width: 410px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/71729_web.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1077\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1077\" alt=\"In this artist\u2019s impression, the newly-discovered, tiny, carnivorous Eocasea martini hides in the footprint of its later descendant, the half-tonne plant-eater Cotylorhynchus. (Credit: Danielle Dufault)\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/71729_web.jpg\" width=\"400\" height=\"277\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/71729_web.jpg 400w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/71729_web-300x207.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1077\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">In this artist\u2019s impression, the newly-discovered, tiny, carnivorous <em>Eocasea martini<\/em> hides in the footprint of its later descendant, the half-tonne plant-eater Cotylorhynchus. (Credit: Danielle Dufault, via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.utm.utoronto.ca\/main-news\/earliest-ancestor-land-herbivores-discovered\" target=\"_blank\">University of Toronto Mississauga<\/a>)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>A new paper shows that giant herbivores\u00a0evolved from much smaller creatures like the newly discovered <em>Eocasea martini<\/em>, a carnivore only 20 cm long.<\/p>\n<p>The study shows that similar transitions of small carnivores to large herbivores happened independently at least five times, setting the stage for the giant herbivores of 270 million years ago. These carnivores are today\u2019s giant herbivores like rhinos, elephants and hippopotamus.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.plosone.org\/article\/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0094518\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Original research paper<\/span><\/a>\u00a0published in the <em>PLOS One<\/em><i>\u00a0<\/i>on\u00a0<strong>April 16, 2014<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Names and affiliations of selected\u00a0authors<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<h4><a href=\"http:\/\/www.erin.utoronto.ca\/~w3reisz\/\" target=\"_blank\">Robert Reisz<\/a>, Department of Biology, University of Toronto Mississauga, Ontario<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new paper shows that giant herbivores\u00a0evolved from much smaller creatures like the newly discovered Eocasea martini, a carnivore only 20 cm long. The study shows that similar transitions of small carnivores to large herbivores happened independently at least five times, setting the stage for the giant herbivores of 270 million years ago. These carnivores [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1077,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[174,215,917],"class_list":["post-1076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-tip","tag-animals","tag-environment","tag-evolution"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/71729_web.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-hm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1076"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1207,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1076\/revisions\/1207"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}