New discoveries await diligent paleontologists. As proof, look no further than Jakob Vinther, a scientist at the University of Bristol in England, who recently unveiled what could be the first example of the non-avian dinosaur butt field.
The research, which was published in the journal Current biology, offers a view inside the back of a psittacosaurus, a dog-sized dino whose fossilized remains managed to retain some appearance of anatomy, enough for Vinther to digitally reconstruct his hole.
Examination of the remains of the Psittacosaurus at the Senckenberg Museum of Natural History in Frankfurt, Germany, Vinther realized that he and his colleagues could develop a model for the animal’s sewer, a multipurpose cavity that facilitates urination, bowel movements, and copulation. (Modern birds, crocodiles and turtles are among those that carry sewers. The word is Latin for “sewer”). Vinther worked with co-authors as a paleoartist. Robert Nicholls and University of Massachusetts Amherst biologist Diane A. Kelly on reconstruction. As a reference, Kelly examined her own collection of animal butts, as well as the latest assets of live hens. After 120 million years, the dinosaur’s back was visible again.
What secrets are hidden inside? On the one hand, the sewer seems to have a different color, which could have attracted potential mates. It also contains scented glands, presumably for the same purpose, and a pair of lips surrounding a bean-shaped dorsal lobe, an arrangement that might look like a drawn curtain. Naturally, Vinther also found some fossilized poop.
Beyond that, Vinther couldn’t tell. If this cloaca is like that of a crocodile, it could have darkened a penis or clitoris, but there was no trace of any genitals. This was said by Patricia Brennan, an expert in animal genitals at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts The New York Times that it is possible that the lobe simply expelled large amounts of sperm in a manner similar to some bird species.
A dinosaur penis stays dodgy. Only limited conclusions can be drawn from a single sample, but the sewer is one more step in understanding the intriguing anatomy of dinosaur buttocks.
[h/t Popular Science]