{"id":41984,"date":"2024-09-11T14:59:08","date_gmt":"2024-09-11T12:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/981ba958-5903-4999-b031-0f521ef2e3e7"},"modified":"2024-09-11T17:27:39","modified_gmt":"2024-09-11T15:27:39","slug":"were-dinosaurs-good-parents-and-how-on-earth-do-we-know","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/rss_feed\/were-dinosaurs-good-parents-and-how-on-earth-do-we-know\/","title":{"rendered":"Were dinosaurs good parents &#8211; and how on earth do we know?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"rssexcerpt\">Did dinosaurs look after their young &#8211; or were they terrible parents? We take a look at the evidence <\/p><p class=\"rssauthor\">By <\/p><p class=\"rssbyline\">Published: Wednesday, 11 September 2024 at 12:59 PM<\/p><hr class=\"no-tts wp-block-separator\"\/><?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\" standalone=\"yes\"?>\n<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><body><p><strong>They would have terrified each other (and us!) but did dinosaurs have a softer side? Like most birds and reptiles, dinosaurs laid eggs<\/strong>. <strong>Parents made nests and some incubated and protected their offspring before hatching.<\/strong><\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-video\"><video controls=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/c02.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/62\/2024\/09\/GettyImages-1319-177.mp4\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Baby Brontosaurs hatching. Getty images<\/figcaption><\/figure><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Were dinosaurs good parents?<\/h2><p>But after birth, baby dinosaurs soon had to fend for themselves. When parents did look after their young, as commonly occurs in mammals, it likely wasn\u2019t for very long.<\/p><ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/dinosaurs\/how-did-dinosaurs-mate\">Dinosaur sex: how these huge animals mated with all those dangerous spikes, claws and plates<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/dinosaurs\/what-dinosaurs-sounded-like\">Do we know what dinosaurs sounded like?<\/a><\/li><\/ul><p>Parental care can be inferred by finding dinosaur bones and eggs in close proximity. This sometimes causes naturalists to jump to conclusions, however, as illustrated by a famous case that gave one species an undeserved reputation. <\/p><p>In the 1920s, explorer Roy Chapman Andrews (an inspiration for Indiana Jones) went to Mongolia and discovered eggs next to a theropod \u2013 a group whose members are often predators. <\/p><p>The eggs were thought to belong to a herbivore, <em>Protoceratops<\/em> (\u2018first horned face\u2019), leading the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amnh.org\/\">American Museum of Natural History (AMNH)<\/a> to picture scenes where ceratopsian parents protected their nest of eggs from the theropod, which was named <em>Oviraptor<\/em> (\u2018egg thief\u2019). <\/p><p>That interpretation was incorrect. In 1995, palaeontologists from AMNH found new Mongolian fossils of the predator\u2019s close relative sitting on a nest of so-called <em>Protoceratops<\/em> eggs. <em>Oviraptor<\/em> had been given a bad rap and may even have been a good parent.<\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-video\"><video controls=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/c02.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/62\/2024\/09\/GettyImages-1174486658.mp4\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Is this a realistic representation? Getty video<\/figcaption><\/figure><p>Many dinosaurs were massive. How could they have incubated eggs without crushing them? Heavy groups like sauropods didn\u2019t sit on their eggs, but lighter ones might have done, just like birds \u2013 a parent (typically the mother) gently lowers themselves and uses tail feathers to reposition eggs, then keep them warm. <\/p><p>Larger species may have used a heating system similar to that of crocodilians \u2013 piling plant matter on top of eggs to create a compost heap to generate warmth as the vegetation decays. Although we often picture nests as cosy places, many dinosaur nests were little more than holes in the ground, like those made by living reptiles and avians such as seabirds.<\/p><p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/fossils-guide\">Fossils<\/a> offer the most direct evidence that dinosaurs cared for their newborns. The best example is the hadrosaur <em>Maiasaura<\/em> (\u2018good mother lizard\u2019). In 1979, Jack Horner (the model for the character Dr Alan Grant in <em>Jurassic Park<\/em>) discovered adult skeletons near babies, which suggests that parents brought food to offspring and guarded nests from predators. <\/p><p>The clutches of <em>Maiasaura<\/em> eggs were spread apart, meaning that the dinosaur nested in colonies. These nesting grounds were preserved in successive layers, meaning that parents returned to the same grounds to mate, possibly every year like many birds today. Ornithologists call this \u2018nest site fidelity\u2019. Sauropods did the same thing \u2013 at one site in Argentina, there are six layers of nests containing hundreds of eggs.<\/p><p><strong>Discover more fascinating dinosaur facts<\/strong><\/p><ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/tv\/best-dinosaur-documentaries\">Best dinosaur documentaries to watch<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/dinosaurs\/can-a-dinosaur-be-mummified\">Can a dinosaur be mummified?<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/dinosaurs\/whats-special-about-the-uks-jurassic-coast\">Why are the cliffs of the Jurassic Coast filled with dinosaur fossils?<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/reptiles\/facts-about-fifth-mass-extinction\">Dinosaur mass extinction: what caused it, which dinosaurs went extinct, and how mammals survived<\/a><\/li><\/ul> <\/body><\/html>\n<hr class=\"no-tts wp-block-separator\"\/>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Did dinosaurs look after their young &#8211; or were they terrible parents? We take a look at the evidence <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":41985,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"3"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/09\/were-dinosaurs-good-parents-and-how-on-earth-do-we-know.png",2740,1184,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/09\/were-dinosaurs-good-parents-and-how-on-earth-do-we-know-150x150.png",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/09\/were-dinosaurs-good-parents-and-how-on-earth-do-we-know-300x130.png",300,130,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/09\/were-dinosaurs-good-parents-and-how-on-earth-do-we-know-768x332.png",768,332,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/09\/were-dinosaurs-good-parents-and-how-on-earth-do-we-know-1024x442.png",800,345,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/09\/were-dinosaurs-good-parents-and-how-on-earth-do-we-know-1536x664.png",1536,664,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/09\/were-dinosaurs-good-parents-and-how-on-earth-do-we-know-2048x885.png",2048,885,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Did dinosaurs look after their young - or were they terrible parents? We take a look at the evidence","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/41984"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}