307-Million-Year-Old Canadian Fossil Reveals Earliest Known Plant-Eating Vertebrate

In the cliffs of Cape Breton Island, a golf-ball-sized skull has quietly reordered humanity's understanding of when life first learned to eat the world's forests. The creature, Tyrannoroter heberti, lived 307 million years ago and carried in its jaws the specialized architecture of a plant-eater — teeth interlocked like gears, muscles built for grinding — at a moment scientists had not expected such sophistication to exist. Its discovery suggests that evolution, when presented with an abundant new resource, does not hesitate: the leap from meat to vegetation may have happened far faster than t