BYU duo says ancient bug ate dinosaur bones

PROVO - It sounds like something out of an Indiana Jones movie: black beetles that eat your bones.Except it's actually the Dermestid beetle's babies - or larvae - that do the gnawing.

      And their appetite is for dinosaur bones - although at least one

person interviewed can attest to the fact they love to nibble on human

flesh, as well.

      A Brigham Young University geology duo has discovered ancient

insects are responsible for all those missing pieces of dinosaur bones,

as well as damage to the bones.

     The discovery is being published in the scientific journal Ichnos this month.

      For the study, Brooks Britt, 52, of Orem, an associate professor

of geology at BYU, teamed up with BYU geology graduate student Anne

Dangerfield, 23, of Green Bay, Wis.

      Britt has a great love and respect for dinosaur fossils. That's

why it bugs him that beetle babies were munching on the bones.

      "Look at this bone damage," Britt says, holding up a piece of

camptosaurus bone in the collections room at the BYU Earth Science

Museum. 

"It should be a nice, smooth bone surface," he said. "Look at

these furrows. It looks like someone farmed this land with a rough

tractor.

      "The whole end of this bone is gone," Britt continued. "Centimeters of this bone are gone."

     Britt became obsessed with dinosaur bones when he was a boy. He

would go to the library and read dusty old books from the early 1900s

to learn how to do a paleontological dig. He bought a rock hammer and