![]() ![]() ![]() These coprolites preserve ingested bone and so provide more evidence of what this species of dogs ate. In a recent study in 2018, researchers discovered fossilized feces, also known as coprolites, which presumably belong to Borophagus parvus that lived in central California between 5 to 6 million years. The last of these bone-cracking dogs, Borophagus, vanished approximately 2 million years ago. It is therefore likely that these extinct North American dogs played a similar role in the ecosystem as living hyenas do now. Their skeletal features – such as highly robust skulls and jaws, teeth to withstand high stress, and large muscle-attachment areas for a powerful bite –share many similarities with the spotted hyena. Yet, between 16 to 2 million years ago, the common, but now extinct North American dogs also crushed bone. This feeding ability is rare today, and African and Asian hyenas, particularly the spotted hyena, are the only true ‘bone-crackers’ in our modern ecosystems. Living hyenas are infamous for crushing the bones of their prey to extract the nutritious marrow inside. This combination of traits suggests that bone-crushing Borophagus potentially hunted in collaborative social groups and occupied a niche no longer present in North American ecosystems. parvus body weight of ~24 kg, reaching sizes of obligatory large-prey hunters and (5) prey size ranging ~35–100 kg. Surface morphology, micro-CT analyses, and contextual information reveal (1) droppings in concentrations signifying scent-marking behavior, similar to latrines used by living social carnivorans (2) routine consumption of skeletons (3) undissolved bones inside coprolites indicating gastrointestinal similarity to modern striped and brown hyenas (4) B. We report rare coprolites (fossilized feces) of Borophagus parvus from the late Miocene of California and, for the first time, describe unambiguous evidence that these predatory canids ingested large amounts of bone. Borophagine canids have long been hypothesized to be North American ecological ‘avatars’ of living hyenas in Africa and Asia, but direct fossil evidence of hyena-like bone consumption is hitherto unknown. ![]()
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