These scientists studied Louisiana roadkill to learn more about dinosaurs

Enlarge / An alligator whose tissues were analyzed for this study. The sample was provided to the researchers by the Landry family. Several family members regularly appear in the History Channel's unscripted series Swamp People. (credit: Tom Cullen)
Tom Cullen vividly recalls a day in the Louisiana bayou when he and fellow team members from Chicago's Field Museum stopped to collect a dead squirrel by the side of the road. They found a treasure trove of fish scales and bones—plus a fox's jawbone—decomposing just 100 feet away, most likely dropped by a feasting bird of prey. It was like roadkill manna from heaven for Cullen, who was there collecting specimens for a project to explore the ecosystems dinosaurs lived in millions of years ago.
'We were interested in trying to understand dinosaur ecology and how dinosaurs interact with their habitats and with other organisms they co-exist with,' said Cullen. The Mesozoic ecosystem was essentially 'a large coastal floodplain forest,' so he reasoned that it might be a good idea to study a similar modern-day ecosystem: Louisiana's swamps and bayous. The results from that project have now been published in the Royal Society Open Science journal.
Scientists typically rely on stable isotope analysis with mass spectrometry to determine food web structure in ecosystems: that is, what different animals eat and where they fit in the overall food chain. Stable isotopes (versions of elements that have different numbers of neutrons and are hence lighter or heavier) are preserved in animals' bones and teeth, lasting tens of millions of years.
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