Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

Jewish Business News

World News

Dinosaur nest discovered inside ‘Dragon’s Tomb’ in Mongolia

Found with associated shell fragments, Saurolophus dino likely from nest, in earliest stages of development

dinosaur Saurolophus_angustirostris dinosaur - CREDIT: DEWAELE ET AL

Scientists found a group of Saurolophus angustirostris “babies”, a giant hadrosaur dinosaur, all likely from the same nest, found at “Dragon’s Tomb” in Mongolia.

Discovered in an area called the “Dragon’s Tomb, ” a famous location for finding Late Cretaceous dinosaur fossils in the Gobi Desert, Mongolia, the scientists described three or four perinatal specimens or “babies” and two associated eggshell fragments. The young dinosaurs were likely part of a nest originally located on a river sandbank, and the authors suggest they are likely Saurolophus angustirostris (‘lizard crest’), a dinosaur that is known from multiple well-preserved complete skeletons.

Please help us out :
Will you offer us a hand? Every gift, regardless of size, fuels our future.
Your critical contribution enables us to maintain our independence from shareholders or wealthy owners, allowing us to keep up reporting without bias. It means we can continue to make Jewish Business News available to everyone.
You can support us for as little as $1 via PayPal at office@jewishbusinessnews.com.
Thank you.

The skull length of these Saurolophus was around 5 percent that of the largest known S. angustirostris specimens, indicating that they were in the earliest development stages.

dinosaur Saurolophus_angustirostris_supplied_

 

 

But the bones already resembled S. angustirostris characteristics, including the upwardly directed snout (the premaxillary bones).

Leonard Dewaele, of Ghent University and the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, said “The poorly developed crest in Saurolophus babies provides evidence of ontogenetic crest growth within the Saurolophini tribe. The Saurolophini are the only Saurolophinae to bear supra cranial crests as adults.”

 

The study said the specimens did not yet have the characteristic cranial crest at the top of the head and areas of the skull - the cervical neural arches - were not yet fused,   which suggest they may have been in the earliest stages of the development

 

Scientists can’t tell whether the individuals were still in the eggs or had just hatched when they died, but they were apparently already dead and partly decomposed when they were buried by river sediment during the wet summer season. The fossilized eggshell fragments associated with the perinatal individuals closely resemble those found from S. angustirostris relatives in Mongolia, and scientists suggest these specimens may bridge a gap in our knowledge of the development of S. angustirostris.

The findings were published in the journal Plos One.

Newsletter



Advertisement

You May Also Like

World News

In the 15th Nov 2015 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:   ·         A new Israeli treatment brings hope to relapsed leukemia...

Entertainment

The Movie The Professional is what made Natalie Portman a Lolita.

Travel

After two decades without a rating system in Israel, at the end of 2012 an international tender for hotel rating was published.  Invited to place bids...

VC, Investments

You may not become a millionaire, but there is a lot to learn from George Soros.