It's canid coprolite--AKA petrified dog poop. It's some 6 million years old--from the upper Miocene Mehrten Formation, from a locality situated in the transition zone between California's Great Central Valley and the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada. It's from an extinct bone-cracking dog called Borophagus parvus.
Here's the absract from the paper First bone-cracking dog coprolites provide new insight into bone consumption in Borophagus and their unique ecological niche, May 2018, co-authored by vertebrate paleontologist Dr. Xiaoming Wang (Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County)--one of the world's leading authorities on fossil dogs:
"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. 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. 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. parvus body weight of ~24 kg, reaching sizes of obligatory large-prey hunters; and (5) prey size ranging ~35—100 kg. 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."
Good to know that somebody finally got around to picking this stuff up after about 6 million years:
All Of My Fossils-Related (And Music) Web Pages
Here's the absract from the paper First bone-cracking dog coprolites provide new insight into bone consumption in Borophagus and their unique ecological niche, May 2018, co-authored by vertebrate paleontologist Dr. Xiaoming Wang (Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County)--one of the world's leading authorities on fossil dogs:
"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. 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. 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. parvus body weight of ~24 kg, reaching sizes of obligatory large-prey hunters; and (5) prey size ranging ~35—100 kg. 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."
Good to know that somebody finally got around to picking this stuff up after about 6 million years:
All Of My Fossils-Related (And Music) Web Pages
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