Fig. 5: Composite figure illustrating the relationship of daily wear rate vs microwear features in some non-ornithopod genasaurian (dark blue) and selected ornithopod dinosaurs (light blue) (Source data are provided as a Source Data file).

This demonstrates that in correlation with body size increase, the daily amount of worn tooth crown/jaw quadrant also strongly increased during the evolution of ornithopod dinosaurs. In parallel, microwear results reveal a more complex and pit-dominated wear pattern in basal ornithopods vs a less complex and scratch-rich wear pattern found in advanced iguanodontians.