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New discoveries await assiduous paleontologists. For proof, look no further than Jakob Vinther, a scientist from the University of Bristol in England, who recently unveiled what may be the first example of a non-avian dinosaur butt in the field.
The research, which was published in the journal Current biology, provides an inside glimpse of the back of a psittacosaurus, a dog-sized dino whose fossilized remains managed to retain some semblance of anatomy – enough for Vinther to digitally reconstruct his asshole.
Examine the remains of the Psittacosaurus At the Senckenberg Natural History Museum in Frankfurt, Germany, Vinther realized that he and his colleagues could develop a model for the animal’s cesspool, a versatile cavity that facilitates urination, bowel movements, and copulation. . (Modern birds, crocodiles, and turtles are among those that sport cloacas. The Latin word means “sewer.”) Vinther worked with co-authors like the paleoartist Robert nicholls and Diane A. Kelly, biologist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, on reconstruction. For reference, Kelly turned to her own collection of animal butts, as well as the active buttocks of live chickens. After 120 million years, the back of the dinosaur was visible again.
What secrets are hidden inside? On the one hand, the cesspool appears to have a distinct color, which could have attracted potential mates. It also contains scent glands, presumably for the same purpose, and a pair of lips surrounding a bean-shaped dorsal lobe, an arrangement that might have looked like a drawn curtain. Naturally, Vinther also found some fossilized shit.
Beyond that, Vinther couldn’t tell. If this cesspool is like that of a crocodile, it could have masked a penis or a clitoris, but no trace of any genitalia was present. Patricia Brennan, animal genitalia expert at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, said The New York Times that it is possible that the lobe is simply expelling massive amounts of sperm in a manner similar to some species of birds.
A dinosaur penis remains elusive. Only limited conclusions can be drawn from a single sample, but the cesspool nonetheless is another step in understanding the intriguing anatomy of dinosaur butts.
[h/t Popular Science]
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