Re: And now for your breakfast enjoyment... preserved muscle tissue in tyrant turds!

[Richard W Travsky <rtravsky@uwyo.edu>]

On Wed, 11 Jun 2003, Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. wrote:
> Just out in the latest issue of Palaios:
> Chin, K., D.A. Eberth, M.H. Scweitzer, T.A. Rando, W.J. Sloboda, and J.R.
> Horner.  2003.  Remarkable Preservation of Undigested Muscle Tissue Within a
> Late Cretaceous Tyrannosaurid Coprolite from Alberta, Canada. Palaios 18:
> 286–294.
> 
> The specimen in question is from the Lethbridge Coal Zone at the top of the
> Dinosaur Park Fm. in Alberta.  It's 64 cm long and 17 cm wide.  Within the
> mass are bits of three-dimensionally preserved soft tissue that appears to
> be muscle (both from microscopic morphology and chemical analysis).  The
> bone fragment associated with it has characteristics of pachycephalosaur
> skull domes (conspicuous acellular areas, distinctive branching canaliculi,
> and numerous Sharpey’s fibers), so that might have been the critter that was
> munched.
> 
> The evidence here is consistent with the Frenchman Fm. tyrant turd and Two
> Medicine Fm. Daspletosaurus gut contents on supporting a rapid transit time
> for food through the belly of the beasts (unlike crocs and snakes, for
> instance).

Rapid transit time? What does this say about its metabolism?