New findings await diligent paleontologists. For proof, look no further than Jakob Vinther, a scientist at the University of Bristol in England, who recently revealed what the first possible example of a non-bird dinosaur lump is.
The research, published in the journal Conventional biology, offering an inside view behind a psittacosaurus, a dog – sized dino whose fossil remains have retained some sense of anatomy – enough for Vinther to digitally reconstruct, uh, butthole.
Examining 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 cloak, a multifaceted berry that enables urination, bowel movements , and copying. (Modern birds, crocodiles, and turtles are among those who sport cloakas. The Latin word for “sewer.”) Vinther worked with co-authors as a paleoartist Robert Nicholls and University of Massachusetts Amherst biologist Diane A. Kelly reconstructed. For information, Kelly looked at her own collection of animal nuggets, as well as the active back of live chickens. After 120 million years, the dinosaur’s rear end was visible again.
What are the mysteries of the interior? For one, the cloak appears to have a distinctive color, which may have attracted companions. There are also olfactory glands, probably for the same reason, and a pair of lips around the dorsal lobe in the shape of a woman, an arrangement that may resemble a drawn curtain. Naturally, Vinther also discovered a few fossil pots.
Beyond that, Vinther couldn’t tell. If this cloak resembles a crocodile, it may have hidden a penis or clitoris, but no trace of any genes was present. Patricia Brennan, an animal genitals expert at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, reported The New York Times that it is possible that the lobe destroyed a lot of sperm in a similar way to some bird species.
Dinosaur penis is still incompetent. Only limited conclusions can be drawn from a single sample, but nonetheless the cloak is another step in understanding the intricate anatomy of the dinosaur butts.
[h/t Popular Science]