Discovering the food of 'appetite' of prehistoric cockroaches

Scientists point out that dinosaur waste is a "banquet" with ancient cockroaches.

Scientists at the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Slovakia have discovered an interesting fact after studying the diet of the extinct ancient cockroach species. Thereby, they found that the waste of animals, especially dinosaurs, will become an abundant food source - a "favorite" food of cockroaches.

Using advanced imaging methods, scientists have found wood particles inside the cockroaches of cockroaches and they immediately think of dinosaurs. Because most dinosaur fossils contain a large component from woody plants, seeds and pollen.

Pictures of cockroaches are "preserved" in fossil fossils

Further research, scientists found, dung beetles and flies were less developed in the Middle Ages (about 250 million to 65 million years ago), but the ancient cockroaches were "wandering" on the Left. land very early, at the same time as herbivorous dinosaurs.

When X-rays on fossil cockroaches preserved in amber fragments found in Lebanon, dating back to the Cretaceous period (about 120 million years ago), experts found that in the intestine they contained pebbles. Feces, with seeds, small pieces of wood are quite intact.

Images of fossilized cockroaches are preserved in pieces of amber found in Lebanon

This shows that cockroaches when eaten have not chewed but swallowed down the abdomen. However, the digestive system of insects is not capable of decomposing wood. This is the answer to the cockroaches that have eaten the feces of ancient herbivorous dinosaurs.

When dinosaurs are extinct, cockroaches also lose a huge source of food, now they start looking for another source of food - the waste of bats and birds .

The study was published in PLoS ONE magazine.