We, Viraltrendzs have brought a mysterious story about dinosaurs. Almost we know a lot about how dinosaurs looked like, what they ate, and what killed them. This will brings you to how dinosaur used their cloacal vent for pooping, peeing, breeding, and laying eggs.
As said by the Paleontologists, this dinosaur had a strange opening that is “molded in its perfect unique way”. The well-preserved fossils belonged to the dinosaur Psittacosaurus. It looked like a labrador-size,horn-faced dinosaur with a bristly tail.
Although it doesn’t give us any direct answer on how dinosaurs reproduced, it gives us some hints. Jakob Vinther, a Paleontologist said, “We don’t have any dinosaur fossils where you can be sure they’ve been trapped in the act”.
The majority of the vertebrates have various openings to fill various needs, like defecation, urination, and reproduction. But some creatures like birds and reptiles have only one hole which is known as the cloaca.
“It is very special. Most cloacas form a sort of cut. Here and there it’s a vertical split, in some cases it’s a smiley face, some of the time it’s a sour face. This thing has a V-formed design with a couple of decent erupting lips. And still, there’s no other living gathering of creatures that have a morphology similar to that. It’s fairly like crocodiles yet at the same time unusual.” said Vinther.
The fossils were found from northern China many decades before. That is where Vinther started dealing with the fossil in 2016 to recreate the color pattern of the dinosaur. As he reached the last stages of his first investigation he understood that the dinosaur’s cloaca was flawless enough so it might actually be analyzed as well.
Vinther recalled the moment from 2016, “I got an opportunity to take a gander at the example once more, very close and out of nowhere acknowledged, ‘Wow, the cloaca is entirely well-preserved, and we can really see some anatomy that I didn’t think we could see.'”
( image credits : buggedspace.com)
However, any delicate tissue (like a penis) was not preserved. Therefore the researcher couldn’t affirm whether the dinosaur was male or female. Most bird species mate by holding down their cloacal openings together.
“In creatures with cloacal vents, the private parts are tucked inside the body and haven’t been preserved. So it can’t be known whether this dinosaur was male or female.”
A few paleontologists accept that the dinosaur also mated this way. While Vinther and his group accept something else. “From what we can see, this cloaca would not have appropriate for cloacal kissing. It appears that it would have been penetrative sex.”
Vinther and his group accept that this Labrador sized dinosaur may have a penis because the cloaca was fairly like one of a male crocodile, which doesn’t have that genital organ.
To improve understanding of Psittacosaurus’ cloacal vent, specialists compared it with the vibrates that are living on land. The group made different discoveries, they noticed that the orifice was edged by large pigmented projections on both sides of the opening, which may have held musk-discharging glands. These glands are found in both male and female crocodiles.
“Likewise, the external edges of the cloaca are profoundly pigmented with melanin. While they don’t know exactly what color it was. It probably would have stood out from the dinosaur’s pale underside,” said Vinther.
This common pigmentation could imply that the cloacal vent was used to show and flag for courtship.
This fossil is currently displayed at the Senckenberg Museum of Natural History in Frankfurt, Germany.
