From National Geographic Daily News by Anne Casselman:
A nest full of fossilized dinosaur babies has been discovered in Mongolia, and the find has paleontologists reexamining styles of parental care among the ancient reptiles.
The approximately 75-million-year-old nest shows 15 juvenile members of Protoceratops andrewsi—a relative of Triceratops—entombed in ancient sand dune deposits. The nest was recently discovered by Mongolian paleontologist Pagmin Narmandakh in the region’s Djadokhta formation.
The 2.3-foot-wide (0.7-meter-wide) nest is breathtaking, according to David Fastovsky, a co-author on a paper about the dinosaur nest published in the November edition of the Journal of Paleontology.
Unlike other dinosaur nests found with fossil eggs, the babies in this nest appear to have been about a year old when they died.
(Related picture: “Birdlike Dinosaur Eggs Found.”)
“We think there’s good evidence for some sort of parental care, because these animals are growing together at the nest,” said Fastovsky, a paleontologist at the University of Rhode Island. “They did not come fresh out of eggs two minutes ago.”
From Mama…
This is exciting evidence that dinosaurs may have been “good parents.” It appears the Protoceratops cared for its young well after hatching.
A question from our own Michael Fisher: I’m puzzled why a large number of kiddies are together in a nest ~ they’re not hatchlings & a parent couldn’t feed them all ~ seems strange to me. Do they graze & return to a communal nest at night for defence? The adults are sheep-sized herbivores [but bear in mind that grass had yet to be 'invented' then].
I agree. It makes me wonder could it have been for warmth? Some paleontologists have posited that the dinosaurs may have been warm blooded.
Protoceratops (Wikipedia)
Could Protoceratops fossils be the origin of the griffin myths?
Folklorist and historian of science Adrienne Mayor of Stanford University has suggested that the exquisitely preserved fossil skeletons of Protoceratops and other beaked dinosaurs, found by ancient Scythian nomads who mined gold in the Tian Shan and Altai Mountains of Central Asia, may have been at the root of the image of the mythical creature known as the griffin. Griffins were described as lion-sized quadrupeds with large claws and a raptor-bird-like beak; they laid their eggs in nests on the ground.
Greek writers began describing the griffin around 675 B.C., at the same time the Greeks first made contact with Scythian nomads. Griffins were described as guarding the gold deposits in the arid hills and red sandstone formations of the wilderness. The region of Mongolia and China where many Protoceratops fossils are found is rich in gold runoff from the neighboring mountains, lending some credence to the theory that these fossils were the basis of griffin myths. (source Wikipedia)
Here’s what I plan to do with this today
The picture of the baby Protoceratops is very moving. It demonstrates it sudden nature of the fossilization process.
After discussing the photo and reviewing fossilization, I am going to ask my monkey to create her own myth. We will brainstorm some possible topics: thunder, lightening, the seasons (just to name a few). I’ll ask her to write her myth in the comments section. I invite you to do the same (posts on Socratic Mama can be anonymous and your email will not be published). Let’s fire up their creativity.
Great post! I’m subscribing to see what Mason comes up with. I’ll see if my own kids can come up with anything.
Neat post. I’ve shared with a friend who has kids. Hopefully, she will develop a secular approach.
When I was around five I came up with the idea that the wind was caused by the waving of trees. I thought about this for a year or two & decided that it was incorrect because the windiest days were after the trees in my neighbourhood had long lost their leaves. Why more wind when the ‘tree fans’ had lost their fans? Maybe they waved much harder without their leaves? Nope the opposite was true. This (& many other speculations I kept to myself because of the times I grew up in…
One of the poverties of being a 50s/60s child, around my way, was that ones ideas & opinions were of no value to grown ups ~ this was true for all the children I knew. The Victorian view that “children are best seen & not heard” was the rule. My neighbour Betty ~ who is 94yo, when she talks about children today always gauges their manners first & I have observed that she expects them to behave as miniature adults with similar concerns about tact & appearance. Her only child, Kate, was rewarded if she didn’t speak at table before dessert. Sad, but not at all unusual here in the UK.
Mama wrote:
I’ve been thinking on this for some time. Jerry Coyne covered this story today over at WEIT & I made this (layman) comment over there:-
I think the term nest is misleading
How is parental feeding of the young possible in dinosaur herbivores? Their diet isn’t energy-rich enough to make it worthwhile bringing anything back to the nest other than nuts or fruit ~ that isn’t practical for 15 large chicks. AFAIK there isn’t a dinosaur equivalent of milk & a herbivore can’t very well turn up at the nest with a protein-rich carcass to feed the one year old dinosaur chicks.
I believe that the dead chicks are not all siblings & they are together because it’s easier to protect them if you ‘circle the wagons’ (the adults) around a huddle of the young. Perhaps at night & in storms it’s the practise to run a convoy protection system with the high value & vulnerable young placed in the middle of the herd. Actually this protection system must run all the time.
The real puzzle for me is how an egg-laying HERD can stay in one place long enough to hatch the eggs. I assume that all (or a portion of) the herd must remain rooted to an area for a number of weeks & eat the area back to nothing. I looked up ostrich behaviour & perhaps we can see some answers in their behaviour ~ they normally spend the winter months in pairs or alone. During breeding season and sometimes during extreme rainless periods they live in nomadic groups of five to 50 birds (led by a top hen) that often travel together with other grazing animals, such as zebras or antelopes. Wiki :-
This doesn’t explain 15 one-year-old chicks together in a nest, but perhapr since dinos don’t suckle it is likely that the mobile young run together in the middle of the herd rather than being glued to their mothers’ sides as with milk-producing mammals
Just a thought…