What happened to dino poop? Cockroaches probably ate it: study

Dinosaurs likely left large amounts of excrement in their wake, leaving scientists wondering just what cleaned up after them.

A new study in the online journal Plos One proposes a candidate for this - cockroaches.

According to the study dung beetles and rapidly developing flies were rare during most of the Mesozoic, leaving a species of extinct cockroach (Blattulidae), which had a temporal range associated with herbivorous dinosaurs, as the best candidate for eating dinosaur their poop.

The researchers had a chance to test their hypothesis thanks to coprolite's extracted from an immature Lebanese cockroach that had been preserved in amber.

What they found after using synchrotron X-ray microtomography was that the coprolite's were 1.06% wood with smooth edges, suggesting that they had been pre-digested, which suggests that they were from those herbivorous dinosaurs.

You can read the full study on PloS One.