From Dinosaur Scratches to Insects in Amber, How Paleontologists Uncover Prehistoric Courtship

Dinosaur mating dance

Predatory dinosaurs love Acrocantosaurus Perform a mated dance. Fossils indicating such a dance took place Perhaps this typewere Described in 2016Field
A work of art Lida Sin and Yuzhan Khan / University Colorado Denver

Key conclusions: evidence of dinosaur courtship

  • Earlier this summer, researchers announced that they found fossils, which probably come from courtship with dinosaurs.
  • To find more fossil evidence of prehistoric animals, caring and mating, scientists will have to keep their mind open.

At first glance, prehistoric potholes dotting the 100 millionth rock of the Roborado Dinosaurus ridge may not look so much. The marvelous in the orange rock is rough and uneven, as if they were part of the surface that collapsed. However, in a more thorough investigation, paleontologists found that these recesses in the rock are evidence of the delicate side of dinosaurs. The holes were made by caring for dinosaurs when they tried to impress each other in how well they could scratch the nest.

The behavior of dinosaurs was like the behavior of some birds alive today. Paleontologist University of Old Dominion Koldwell Buntinwho studied the site, notes that dinosaurs are associated with such carnivorous animals Allosaurus He gathered on the spot to demonstrate his nests manufacturing skills. “During the nesting demonstrations of the trashkovin, the nest, the nest is detected by men, and when visiting the woman herself will perform additional displays that press the sediment around the nest,” says Buntin. It is unclear whether the accumulated spots were actually as a nests or not, but, according to the visible, they were at least a love demonstration.

Experts were announced by experts in the dinosaur display arena Earlier this summerThe last and largest such site, discovered since paleontologists for the first time recognized the traces created by the care of dinosaurs In 2016The field of the dinosaur’s extension is far from the only signs of fossil courtship and mating paleontologists are discovered. Even as a sexual life of some of our favorite fossils remain mysteriousRare discoveries of prehistoric turtles that died during mating, scaling insects preserved in amber and Dancing traces Of the ancient birds, they demonstrate how some of the most intimate and fleeting moments in prehistoric life can be preserved.

Dinosaur tracks

These estimates suggest that dinosaurs perform mating rituals in what is now Colorado.

Koldwell Buntin

From the point of view of geological time, all the behavior of mating is brief affairs. The occurrence of courtship and mating in a matter of seconds or days, concrete and infinitely diverse mating of animals is a short part of their life. The chances of two or more organisms died at the same time, in a sense, which would be deciphered as mating behavior and preservation in a fossil report in the place where they can be found by experts, incredibly small.

Despite the chances, however, unusual and often catastrophic circumstances in this act delicately retain animals. More than 47 million years ago, that now Germany, pairs of prehistoric turtle Allai were In the middle of mating When they unconsciously plunged into toxic waters near the bottom of the ancient lake. The mating pairs were killed and were covered with fine -grained sediment at the bottom of the lake, so devoid of garbagemen that the dead turtles were not untouched. A similar fate I met at least one pair of 325 million sharks called Falcatus When they were suddenly killed, perhaps when the stock from the neighboring land made oxygen levels suddenly fall. The combination in the watery habitats occurred with unusual risks that sometimes retained these ephemeral moments for millions of years.

However, some of the most extensive evidence of prehistoric courtship are among invertebrates. When accumulating sea scorpions, known as European paleontologists, suggest that invertebrates on the water gathered together in tidal apartments to grow, friend and lay eggs In shallow water. Away from the water, on the contrary, Sticky wood resin Often covered insects that mated or intended to do this, creating fossil organisms, which otherwise were too small so that they could be preserved in layers of stone.

Last year alone, the Paleontologist Konstanta Peni-Karat and his colleagues described Roy 99-million-tier tripps in amber. Trips is small insects associated with lice and cicadas, which gather together in stable lanes, often around important sources of food. Trips, preserved in the Cretaceous Amber, are a mixed group in which there are pollen grains attached to their bodies. When insects gathered to eat a pollen on a tree, it was also the possibility of mating, which, unfortunately, for them, ended when a fat resin was shook on them. Similar finds were made of mating ticksIN Spring tailsIN Dance flies And more, demonstrating how familiar courtship rituals among invertebrate groups, which are still alive today, go for tens of millions of years.

The fossils, however, are only one small part of the story. Traces of fossils made by living beings, like a track left by a walking dinosaur, record prehistoric behavior. Estimates in prehistoric precipitation, like scratches of dinosaurs in Colorado, often give an idea of ​​how caring animals move and interact, even when there are no bones or fossils for the body.

About 243 million years ago The fact that now in Germany, prehistoric horseshoe -shaped crabs crawled around a dirty apartment in search of comrades. The tracks and paths that they left behind resemble traces created by modern horseshoes of crabs when males follow women, hoping to hold on to mate. It was so assembly that traces of crocodiles on Earth were discovered, which, perhaps, were involved in the crowd, to choose somewhat for food or garbage among those who could die. The body of fossils of crabs has not been preserved here, but their behavior was.

Paleontologists often rely on modern animals to interpret prehistoric fossils, such as Watching the sofas of spiders and scorpions in the sand To determine the fossils, their prehistoric colleagues remained in the Perm rock. However, relying on modern animals as guides. The greatest weakness of the use of modern animals for understanding fossils, the Paleontologist of the University of Emory Anthony Martin He says that some fossil organisms behaved in such a way as not to have a modern equivalent. Many dinosaurs were much larger than most of the land animals today, and were completely anatomically different from crocodiles and birds around us. So, especially when it comes to dinosaurs, the detection of courtship and mating requires an unbiased mind.

Tracks and other fossils of traces can have the greatest potential for revealing the mated behavior, especially for animals, too large to be covered with amber or buried in one storm. While it is very unlikely that paleontologists will find liba Triceratops which were accompanied when they died and were instantly buried, for example, it is much more likely that the feet and other traces of dinosaur courtship can be found among various other types of walking, running, digging and dormant behavior that paleontologists have opened.

In fact, Martin notes, evidence of courtship in a fossil report can appear much more often than direct evidence of mating. “Given that not all balances successfully lead to mating, and the potentially large number of steps that a fan can perform, the traces of courtship should be much more common than the remnants of a fan,” he says.

In search of such traces, it will be necessary that paleontologists keep their eyes open to the unusual. For example, no one knows how the non-Avian dinosaurs were sleeping, but some residue can remain from a dirty apartment or a sandy shore from the edge of a stream or lake, where, it seems, two sets of dinosaur paths merge. “They will probably attract that both dinosaurs stop, approach each other, and then stay together, but also move to more or less,” says Martin, probably seems dirty when the dinosaurs crossed the roads that they have already made. Until now, no one has found such a fossil, but Martin holds his eyes open. “We hope that the paleontological equivalent of this well -known quote from the judge of the Supreme Court of Potter Stuart, who in 1964, trying to determine obscenity, said:“ I know this when I see it. ”

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