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Triassic dicynodonts in Argentina had communal latrine (free pdf)



From: Ben Creisler
bcreisler@gmail.com

This open-access paper might have been more appropriate for April
Fools rather than traditional American Thanksgiving, but it appears to
be the earliest evidence of some kind of social gathering behavior
among synapsids:


Lucas E. Fiorelli, Martín D. Ezcurra, E. Martín Hechenleitner, Eloisa
Argañaraz, Jeremías R. A. Taborda, M. Jimena Trotteyn, M. Belén von
Baczko & Julia B. Desojo (2013)
The oldest known communal latrines provide evidence of gregarism in
Triassic megaherbivores.
Scientific Reports 3, Article number: 3348
doi:10.1038/srep03348
http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/131128/srep03348/full/srep03348.html

Defecation in communal latrines is a common behaviour of extant
mammals widely distributed among megaherbivores. This behaviour has
key social functions with important biological and ecological
implications. Herbivore communal latrines are only documented among
mammals and their fossil record is exceptionally restricted to the
late Cenozoic. Here we report the discovery of several massive
coprolite associations in the Middle-Late Triassic of the Chañares
Formation, Argentina, which represent fossil communal latrines based
on a high areal density, small areal extension and taphonomic
attributes. Several lines of evidence (size, morphology, abundance and
coprofabrics) and their association with kannemeyeriiform dicynodonts
indicate that these large synapsids produced the communal latrines and
had a gregarious behaviour comparable to that of extant
megaherbivores. This is the first evidence of megaherbivore communal
latrines in non-mammal vertebrates, indicating that this mammal-type
behaviour was present in distant relatives of mammals, and predates
its previous oldest record by 220 Mya.