To understand the environment of the fossilized organism to see what it would have ate or drank anything. in the surrounding area.
The answer is; It provided clues for scientists to develop a hypothesis about the origin of flight.
Scientists now postulate that dinosaurs are the ancestors of birds. This because the Microraptor is a dinosaur with feathers in all its limbs. It is also the smallest dinosaur to every been discovered and has been compared with the Archaeopteryx (involving even genetic sequencing) to hypothesize how dinosaurs evolved into birds.
Basic needs? Like Food supply, water source, oxygen, safe environment like trees to hide from Predators.
The function of the hepatic portal circulation is to collect absorbed nutrients for metabolic processing or storage.