Prehistoric 'Chickens From Hell' Protected Their Eggs
Joel Shurkin, IS
It's hard to think of dinosaurs as being loving, caring parents, but scientists have found some of them may have been just that. Take the oviraptorosaurs, a group of feathered creatures that look as if they were constructed by a malignant committee from spare bird parts.By studying fossilized oviraptorosaur eggs, researchers from France and China have found that oviraptorosaurs lay across those eggs in nests and warmed them with body heat just as modern birds do. Paleontologists had previously theorized that oviraptorosaurs incubated their eggs, but the French-Chinese team came up with the...
It's hard to think of dinosaurs as being loving, caring parents, but scientists have found some of them may have been just that. Take the oviraptorosaurs, a group of feathered creatures that look as if they were constructed by a malignant committee from spare bird parts.By studying fossilized oviraptorosaur eggs, researchers from France and China have found that oviraptorosaurs lay across those eggs in nests and warmed them with body heat just as modern birds do. Paleontologists had previously theorized that oviraptorosaurs incubated their eggs, but the French-Chinese team came up with the...