Flowering plants, including the kinds we associate with edible fruit and berries, only diversified near the end of the time of dinosaurs. For most of the Mesozoic, anything like avocadoes and grapes, blackberries or raspberries simply did not exist. Accordingly, paleoartists don’t depict these in their Mesozoic scenes.

But this does not mean Mesozoic animals didn’t eat sweet fruit-like plant parts, as flowering plants are not the only ones that produce them (photo: Juniperus communis, Sarah Gregg/Flickr). Continue reading →