Page 37 - The Restless Earth Fossils

36 Fossils

weight, travel speed, behavior, and ecological relationships of
these extinct creatures.
Even fossilized dung (or droppings), called coprolites by
paleontologists, provide valuable clues about an animal’s diet
and environment. Scientists have found fragments of bone,
teeth, fish scales, mollusks, wood, leaves, seeds, and even
footprints (usually of micelike early mammals) in coprolites.
Distinctive burrows in plant-eating dinosaur coprolites show
that dung beetles, not unlike those alive today, helped recycle
those wastes. Other vertebrate trace fossils include eggs and
the nests that sheltered them. These reveal how certain dino-
saurs and lizards reproduced and cared for their young. Intact

The Scoop on

Some King-sized Poop

Members of the Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Canada found the
largest currently known fossil coprolite in 1995 in sediments from
the end of the age of dinosaurs. The fossil measured about 17 x
6 x 5 inches (44 x 16 x 13 centimeters) and contained chunks of
bone belonging to an animal about the size of a modern cow. The
microscopic distribution of bone fibers and blood vessel arrangement
in the ingested bones implies that they had belonged to a juvenile
dinosaur. Because of the coprolite’s size (probably 2.5 quarts [2.3
liters] when fresh) and the age of the sediments, this jumbo trace
fossil probably belonged to a Tyrannosaurus rex. (In fact, the scien-
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tists found the coprolite while taking a break from a T. rex excava-
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tion just 1.25 miles [2 km] away.) Members of the science team also
recovered scattered remains of a Triceratops nearby. Young Triceratops
et.
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calves may well have been part of a well-balanced T. rex diet.
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