Dinosaurs 'devoted parents'
2004-09-08 12:45
Paris - The image of dinosaurs as brutes that ignored their young - that is, when they didn't devour them - may have to be replaced by something rather Disneyesque.
A new study says astonishing fossils found in the world's finest trove of dinosaur remains are the first solid proof that some dinos were doting parents.
The evidence comes in the form of 34 young Psittacosaurus dinosaurs found huddled at the feet of an adult, clustered in a space just 0.5 of a square metre as the group faced some unnameable but mortal threat.
The US-Chinese palaeontologists, led by David Varricchio of Montana State University, say the adult's protective posture is "compelling evidence" that dinosaurs looked carefully after their young.
How the group died is unclear, although all of its members were found standing upright, which suggests that death was almost instantenous.
The cause could have been a Pompeii-like cloud of suffocating gas and dust from a volcanic eruption, entrapment in an underground burrow that collapsed, or perhaps a sudden, dramatic flooding of their nest.
The Psittacosaurus - "parrot-lizard," so named because of its strong parrot-like beak - was a relatively small, plant-eating dinosaur that lived during the early Cretaceous period about 119-97.5 million years ago.
Parental care
It had strong back legs and two smaller front legs, and could either stand up to reach for vegetation or run on all fours to race away from predators.
The creature measured 80cm to two metres in length, stood about 1.2 metres in height, and weighed between 25kg and 80kg.
Birds - believed to be descendants of the dinosaurs - and crocodiles are well-known for their parental care.
But until now only incidental evidence that dinosaurs were good parents, too. This has come, for example, from bone beds where the remains of adult and young dinosaurs were found together.
The big find came from the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation in Liaoning, Northeastern China, which has yielded scores of stunning fossils, including feathered specimens that point to the theoretical link between dinosaurs and modern birds.