Alright, enough already.
There’s something that we need to talk about it. Something that should be obvious, but that I bet you’ve never thought about:
Dinosaur sex.
For almost two hundred million years, dinosaurs stomped all over the vast continents of Earth. They ate, they pooped, they migrated, they fought…but most people never stop to consider the fact that they also mated. They mated a lot. You don’t rule the Earth for nearly 200 million years without an awful lot of banging.
But how did dinosaurs do it?
The very exciting, but also somewhat dizzying answer is that we just don’t know. Dinosaurs were massive creatures, many of whom were covered in armored plates or spikes, and a good number of whom had shall we say… significant amounts of tail. That’s a lot of logistics to work out.
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| Baby Got Tail |
Perhaps one of the most boggling parts of trying to decode dinosaur coitus, is that we don’t even know what their genitals looked like. Soft tissues, like those of the reproductive system, are not readily preserved in the fossil record. In fact, we still can’t reliably tell male and female fossils apart, though scientists have made a few interesting breakthroughs on the subject. Trying to figure out how dinos mated based on this blank anatomical picture is a bit like smooshing Ken and Barbie together in an attempt to understand how human copulation comes together.
We can’t look at the reproductive systems of dinos, but there are a frankly disconcerting number of living dino relatives on this planet today. The crocodylian order, including those cuddly bunches of sunshine known as crocodiles and alligators, are cousins to dinosaurs. They evolved through a common ancestor that branched off to become dinosaurs in one direction and modern crocs in the other. Birds meanwhile are more or less living dinosaurs, they shared that common ancestor and then split off as a specialized lineage of avian dinosaurs. Birds and terrifying swamp/river monsters are quite physically different to each other (duh), but their proximity to the dinosaur line means that it is reasonable to deduce that any features they share were probably shared by the dinosaurs as well.
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| Even the dinosaurs' most awkward cousin has instagram in nyc |
As it turns out, both birds and crocodylians have cloacas. (If you’re pronouncing that like you’re having a little tiny stroke, then you’re doing it correctly.) The name for this slit and underlying cavity near the tail comes from the latin word for sewer, which makes a lot of sense once you realize that a cloaca basically amounts to one hole, many functions. Cloacas are used to expel solid and liquid waste (because everybody poops, y’all) as well as for reproductive shenanigans like bangin’ and egg layin’.
Male birds and crocodilians keep their sex organs, such as they are, tucked inside their cloacas. Most birds do not have penises, though a few do and there’s new evidence that all birds once did. Members of the crocodilian order do have penises, but again, they stay tucked safely inside until the time is right.
So dinos almost certainly had cloacas and in the likely event that they had penises, they would have been internal and not necessarily all that large. Disappointing news for teenage boys and dinosaur erotica fans alike.
Aside from being useless at telling us what dinosaur junk looked like, the fossil record is also no help when it comes to clues about dino sex positions. With the exception of one very rad fossil of ancient sea turtles in flagrante, we haven’t yet found any fossils of ancient creatures frozen in the act.
Again, it can be helpful to look at some modern equivalents. Giraffes and elephants can give us some idea of how very large and/or very gangly, long necked creatures mated, but the comparisons can only go so far.
It is difficult for us to understand just how massive most of the dinosaurs were. Even at upwards of 14,000 pounds, the largest African elephants are orders of magnitude smaller than a 15+ ton Diploducus. Think of it like this: one Diploducus weighed about as much as 225 Statues of Liberty. One African elephant? A mere seven statues. Sure, a female elephant can support some of the male’s weight during sex, but could a female Diploducus have done the same?
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| We know they mated for a lot of reasons--these nests full of dino eggs are one pretty good clue |
Giraffes’ long necks are semi-analogous to the long necks of sauropods--such as the dinosaur formally known as Brontosaurus--but again, they are just no match for the physical challenges (muscle control, blood flow, not to mention finding a bow tie that fits!) of mating with a 50 foot neck.
The tiny fly swatters that function as tails in giraffes and elephants are laughably inadequate as well. Dino junk in the trunk was far more substantial and not overly flexible, more for balance than anything else. In many species, in fact, the bones at the dino-end were fused, further restricting movement.
Giraffes and elephants are also missing spikes, armored plating, and other dino defenses. Gentlemen, if you think unhooking your date’s bra is difficult, just think of poor Kentrosaurus--a well-armored plant eater that lived around 150-156 million years ago. If a male Kentrosaurus tried to mate with this partner like crocs and many other animals do, that is with one leg thrown over the female’s back, he would, in the words of 3D dino-sex modeler and hero paleontologist Heinrich Mallison, “castrate himself.”
Obviously, a species is going nowhere fast if the act of copulation ends with castration, but Kentrosaurus’ and his fellow dinos’ 180+ million year run tells us that they had the logistics all figured out. I would personally like to picture a wide-eyed dino teenager browsing through Dino Maxim articles with titles like “25 Tips for Avoiding Her Spikes” and “30 New Ways to Make That Tail Work for You Tonight!”