Bob Nicholls/Paleocreations.com 2020
Science

First “Perfect” Preserved Dinosaur Butthole Delights Scientists And Twitter

Though scientists have been digging in holes for years, they’ve only just now discovered a well-preserved dinosaur butthole—and it’s connecting a lot of dots.

Live Science reports that the butthole is actually called a cloacal vent. It’s not like a mammalian butthole. It can poop, pee, and lay eggs. Sort of like the difference between an unfinished basement and a rec room. And yes, it’s also used for breeding.

What researchers are really surprised about is just how much it was likely related to breeding. The preserved hiney shows two small bulges that they think might have contained scent glands that could be used in courtship. Crocodiles have the same sort of business down there and use it to attract mates as well.

https://twitter.com/LiveScience/status/1351635302582939651

These similarities are not an exact replica. The dino’s booty is unique, according to Jakob Vinther, a paleobiologist at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom.

“It’s its own cloaca, shaped in its perfect, unique way,” Vinther said. Beautiful. As you can see:

Bob Nicholls/Paleocreations.com 2020

This particular dinosaur is a Psittacosaurus, which Live Science describes as “a bristly tailed, Labrador-size, horn-faced dinosaur,” related to the Triceratops. It likely lived from about 145 million to 65 million years ago, which is a really long time to keep it tight.

Vinther had seen the specimen before but hadn’t noticed the fine detail. 

“Then, I got a chance to look at the specimen again, up close, and suddenly realized, ‘Oh my god, the cloaca is actually quite well preserved, and we can actually see some anatomy that I didn’t think we could see,'” Vinther said.

He and study co-researchers Robert Nicholls, the paleoartist who recreated the love scene above, and Diane Kelly, an expert on vertebrate penises and copulatory systems, gathered around to really get in deep.

Some observations Kelly made were that the dinosaur probably had copulatory sex and that the hole was ringed with melanin, meaning it was a distinctive color from the area around it. Sort of like a target.

Even better, the butt had poop in it. What a dream! “It’s like a Swiss Army knife of excretory openings,” Vinther said. “It does everything.”

How did these creatures ever go extinct? Though the entire situation is kind of a joke already, here are some of the funniest tweets about it:

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https://twitter.com/hachx0/status/1351664784681402368

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Aimeé Lutkin