Abstract
Dinosaurs undoubtedly produced huge quantities of excrements. But who cleaned up after them? Dung beetles and flies with rapid development were rare during most of the Mesozoic. Candidates for these duties are extinct cockroaches (Blattulidae), whose temporal range is associated with herbivorous dinosaurs. An opportunity to test this hypothesis arises from coprolites to some extent extruded from an immature cockroach preserved in the amber of Lebanon, studied using synchrotron X-ray microtomography. 1.06% of their volume is filled by particles of wood with smooth edges, in which size distribution directly supports their external pre-digestion. Because fungal pre-processing can be excluded based on the presence of large particles (combined with small total amount of wood) and absence of damages on wood, the likely source of wood are herbivore feces. Smaller particles were broken down biochemically in the cockroach hind gut, which indicates that the recent lignin-decomposing termite and cockroach endosymbionts might have been transferred to the cockroach gut upon feeding on dinosaur feces.
Highlights
The Triassic, Jurassic and Early Cretaceous terrestrial ecosystems differed from extant ecosystems for various reasons, one of them being the presence of gigantic reptiles
Discerning between dinosaur feces decomposers is essential as it changes the general appearance of our assemblage reconstructions
Five coprolites that are elliptical in shape and circular in cross section (Fig. 1E, S1) amounting to a total volume of 13362,796 mm3, and about 0.35 mm long contain heterogeneous material. They are preserved in a single piece of amber, adjacent to a fossil of the Early Cretaceous cockroach, and represent a new type of trace fossil that will be designated elsewhere. 1.06% (141,081 mm3)
Summary
The Triassic, Jurassic and Early Cretaceous terrestrial ecosystems differed from extant ecosystems for various reasons, one of them being the presence of gigantic reptiles. The energy flow was principally less efficient (more rapid) and the general appearance of the landscape was dissimilar [1,2]. Grasses, flowers with their fruits, large butterflies, and before the latest Jurassic, all eusocial insects (cockroaches, termites, ants, bees) were absent [3,4]. Grasses were absent before the Early Cretaceous, but such influence will definitely alter extinct cenoses similar to some extent to the variety of living fern groups or perhaps taxa such as Gnetum and Ephedra. Late Cretaceous biomes contain grasses and silicified plant tissues (phytoliths) preserved in the Maastrichtian coprolites (presumably from titanosaurid dinosaurs) from the Lameta Formation in India show that at least five taxa from extant grass (Poaceae) subclades were present during the latest Cretaceous [7]
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