There are scientists who dig up skeletons, and there are those who dig up metals. But the greatest find for a group of scientists from New Zealand, has been dung. To be precise, fossilised bird dung from almost 1500 years ago.
Coprolites or fossilised dung can help scientists study the feeding behaviour of the animal, the microbes in its stomach, and also about parasites that lived on the animal.
These findings can also help understand the ecosystem and biodiversity of the past. After human settlements started, New Zealand lost almost “41% of indigenous bird species” and its ecosystems drastically and quickly changed says the report published recently in the journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America).
Studying the dung
The scientists extracted DNA from the coprolites and used new ' High throughput sequencing' technologies to study the genes of the organism.
The dung samples were collected from caves, creeks and river valleys. Their age ranged from 124 to 1,557 years, and belonged to four species of Moa (extinct flightless herbivorous birds) and one prehistoric Kakapo (flightless parrots) species.
Moa and kakapo were both endemic to New Zealand. Moa was a giant bird that weighed almost 250 kg and stood 3.6 metres tall. They found that both the birds ate ectomycorrhizal fungi (fungi that grow on roots of trees).
“A key finding was that the giant birds were eating a wide range of mushrooms and fungi, including species that are critical for the beech forests that are widespread across New Zealand. The brightly coloured mushrooms remain distinctive parts of these forests today, but it appears they were meant to be eaten and then distributed by the moa,” says lead author of the research, Alexander Boast from the University of Adelaide, in a press release.
Novel parasites
The researchers found nine different type of parasite DNA in the dung, which belonged to roundworms, fluke worms and flat worms.
“Moa coprolites contained surprising diversity of parasites, many completely new to science. Several parasites appear to be specialised to single moa species, so that a range of parasites became extinct with each moa species. As a result, we have probably underestimated the loss of biodiversity associated with the extinction of the megafauna.” says Laura Weyrich, co-author of the paper.
“Our study has identified several potential cascade effects from the loss of native bird species impacting ecosystem processes, including the dispersal of ecologically important fungi. We also provide evidence supporting widespread parasite-host coextinction,” says the report.
