What happened to all the giant mounds of dinosaur poop? (Hint: it involves cockroaches)

Figure 1: Cockroach preserved in amber.What's grosser than heaping piles of steaming dinosaur excrement? Heaping piles of steaming dinosaur excrement being ravenously devoured by cockroaches, of course! In this study, the authors sought to determine what happened to all the poopy poop the dinosaurs pooped out while pooping (especially because "Dung beetles and flies with rapid development were rare during most of the Mesozoic"). To do so, they analyzed the poop of a cockroach preserved in amber to determine whether it might have eaten dinosaur poop. They found small pieces of wood with smooth edges, suggesting "external pre-digestion" (i.e., it already passed through a dinosaur's gut). Poop positive!Cockroaches Probably Cleaned Up after Dinosaurs "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 ...