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I guess it had to happen sooner or later ... Paleontologists have published the first detailed analysis of a dinosaur's multi-purpose poop-chute / piss-nozzle / egg-chute ...
You in the back - knock it off with the snickering! ...
SOURCE: https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-described-a-dinosaur-s-butthole-in-exquisite-detail
You in the back - knock it off with the snickering! ...
Scientists Have Described a Dinosaur's Butthole in Exquisite Detail
When a dog-sized Psittacosaurus was living out its days on Earth, it was probably concerned with mating, eating, and not being killed by other dinosaurs. It would never even have crossed its mind that, 120 million or so years later, scientists would be peering intensely up its clacker. ...
However, that's precisely what they have done, yielding the most detailed description yet of a non-avian dinosaur's cloaca: the catch-all hole used for peeing, pooping, mating, and laying eggs.
This Swiss Army knife of buttholes is common throughout the animal kingdom today - all birds, amphibians, reptiles, and even a few mammals possess a cloaca. But we know little about the cloacae of dinosaurs, including their anatomy, what they looked like, and how the animals used them. ...
Other features, however, were also similar to crocodilians. The cloacal lips were covered in small, overlapping scales and heavily pigmented with melanin. In crocodilians, these lobes function as musky scent glands that are used during social displays - a function, the researchers said, that would be supported by the heavy pigmentation. ...
"Knowing that at least some dinosaurs were signalling to each other gives palaeoartists exciting freedom to speculate on a whole variety of now plausible interactions during dinosaur courtship. It is a game changer!" ...
For lack of samples, this is a very understudied region of dinosaur anatomy, and only by examining a wide range of dinosaur cloacae can we learn more about how they functioned in the social and reproductive lives of these ancient animals.
No doubt, other palaeontologists will now be on the lookout for fossilised buttholes to try to fill this gap in our understanding of dinosaur life.
The research has been published in Current Biology.
SOURCE: https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-described-a-dinosaur-s-butthole-in-exquisite-detail