Kohei Tanaka, Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Nagoya University Museum, succeeded in estimating how a giant dinosaur closely related to birds built a nest through international joint research.
The majority of birds "incubate" their parents in their nests to hatch their eggs.The origin of this behavior is said to date back to pre-bird dinosaurs, but previous studies have been limited to small species and it has been thought that large dinosaurs cannot incubate.It was unclear how the giant Oviraptorosauria, which weighed 2 tons, nested.
Therefore, we investigated fossil eggs and nests of Oviraptorosauria of various sizes, and investigated the relationship between their enormous growth and nesting methods.As a result, it was estimated that about 30 eggs of Oviraptorosauria were arranged in a circle regardless of their body size, and the parents nested in the center of the nest.Furthermore, it was clarified that while the eggs of the small species are densely arranged, the eggs of the large species are arranged in a donut shape so as not to crush the eggs, creating a large space in the center.It was thought that large dinosaurs could not incubate because of their heavy weight, but it is presumed that they changed the arrangement of eggs, created a space in the center of the nest, and crouched there to nest without crushing the eggs.
Paper information:[Biology Letters] Incubation behaviors of oviraptorosaur dinosaurs in relation to body size
