Study signals dramatic change in way ancient diets are calculated

Knowing what extinct animals ate has long been determined by analyzing carbon isotopes locked inside fossil teeth. For two decades, a key isotope value in these equations has been assumed to be the same for all plant-eating mammals, but new research led by Julia Tejada-Lara from the American Museum of Natural History and Columbia University, and published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, contradicts that assumption, revealing that the value changes with body size.