title: Cockroaches probably cleaned up after dinosaurs.
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.
authors: Geological Institute, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia ; Arthropoda Laboratory, Paleontological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia.
authors: Peter
authors: P
authors: Vršanský
authors: Thomas
authors: T
authors: van de Kamp
authors: Dany
authors: D
authors: Azar
authors: Alexander
authors: A
authors: Prokin
authors: L'ubomír
authors: L
authors: Vidlička
authors: Patrik
authors: P
authors: Vagovič
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003058:Cockroaches / Q000502:physiology*; D025061:Dinosaurs / Q000502:physiology*; D005243:Feces / Q000737:chemistry; D020387:Food Chain; D005580:Fossils; D041981:Gastrointestinal Tract / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000502:physiology*; D060434:Herbivory; D020049:Isoptera / Q000502:physiology; D007861:Lebanon; D008031:Lignin / Q000378:metabolism; D013559:Symbiosis; D017356:Synchrotrons; D013997:Time Factors; D055114:X-Ray Microtomography
chemical_list: D008031:Lignin