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posted by martyb on Friday July 19 2019, @09:31AM   Printer-friendly
from the clutching-at-eggs dept.

An 80-million-year-old nesting site found in the Gobi desert in Mongolia confirms that some dinosaurs nested in colonies like birds. It consists of at least 15 clutches of eggs laid during the same season and buried by a flood.

Several other dinosaur nesting sites with multiple clutches have been discovered, so it has long been suspected that some species nested together, as many birds do today. However, at these sites it is not clear that all the clutches were laid during the same season – they could instead be a result of dinosaurs returning to the same site year after year.

[...] Many of the eggs are partly eroded, but ten that are complete have a large opening in the upper half – thought to be the hatching window through which the young therizinosaurs[*] clambered out.

The team think at least 60 per cent of the eggs hatched successfully. “We do not know the fate of the rest,” says Tanaka.

[...] At some point after most of the eggs had hatched, a small flood covered the site in a thin layer of red mud. Crucially, this red mud is inside eggs in different clutches.

“If some eggs were laid in earlier years, we would expect different types of sediments filling the eggs,” says Tanaka.

Later a bigger flood buried the site entirely, preserving it.

Journal reference: Geology, DOI: 10.1130/G46328.1

[*] therizinosaur dinosaur that had feathers and large claws on their forearms.


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  • (Score: 2) by inertnet on Friday July 19 2019, @09:56PM

    by inertnet (4071) on Friday July 19 2019, @09:56PM (#869181) Journal

    Many of the eggs are partly eroded, but ten that are complete have a large opening in the upper half

    Ellen Ripley probably already has taken care of them.

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