Dino lord's back to give the last dinosaur mimic. the fast, big ostrich we all known, met the dinosaur version, Struthiomimus.
Struthiomimus and Ornithomimus are still very much like one another, and between them they seem to have been the two most common types of ornithomimid active in North America.
The signature feature of Struthiomimus is the hand size in that the hands are proportionately longer in relation to the rest of the arm than in other known ornithomimid genera. With this feature in mind, it’s possible that Struthiomimus may have had a greater reliance upon using its hands for feeding, although like with other ornithomimids this, what Struthiomimus ate remains a mystery to be certain.
Like with its close relatives, Struthiomimus had a keratinous toothless beak in life, which could have been used for a variety of different feeding strategies.The hands could also have been used to reach around branches and pull down more of the plant to be within range of the mouth.Today however most prefer to think of Struthiomimus as an omnivore which could adapt to whatever food was available.
Omnivory however is the most likely dietary preference for a relatively small dinosaur like Struthiomimus. The strictly herbivore niche would have been filled by large numbers of ceratopsian dinosaurs like Chasmosaurus as well as other dinosaur types like ankylosaurs such as Euoplocephalus and hadrosaurs like Edmontonsaurus. The predatory niche would have also been filled by large tyrannosaurs such as Albertosaurus as well as smaller dromaeosaurs like Dromaeosaurus. But by moving between these groups and adapting to different conditions, Struthiomimus would be able to coexist with these other forms, perhaps going some way to explain the large number of ornithomimid remains in general.
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