Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
becomes ever so slightly more optimistic: equable temperatures year-round, protec-
tionfromhungrypredators(mademoredesperatefromalackoffood),aroomtohi-
bernate, and—most important from a delaying-extinction standpoint—a safer place
to raise offspring.
Itisnotacoincidencethatpeopleofthe1950sand1960s,tocopewithnuclear-
tinged fears of the Cold War, built underground bomb shelters in an attempt to as-
sure themselves they would survive a nuclear exchange between the Soviet Union
and the U.S. More realistically, though, such shelters only would have delayed the
inevitable, and perhaps small burrowing dinosaurs lived only a few years longer
than their larger, non-burrowing relatives before succumbing to the wretched after-
effects of a massive meteorite hitting their planet. Nonetheless, knowledge that at
leastafewdinosaurshadthemeanstolivejustafewmoreyearsbolsteredcredence
to a concept of dinosaurian resilience, defying long-held and unfair stereotypes of
maladapted ineptitude summarized in the phrase “dead as a dinosaur.”
Lastly, burrowing is a behavior present in every major group of vertebrates
that made it past the mass extinction: birds, mammals, crocodilians, turtles, lizards,
and amphibians. Could burrowing have been one of the essential tools in a Swiss
Army knife of adaptations possessed by terrestrial animals, which came in handy
once disaster struck? Is it possible that an ability to burrow has allowed certain lin-
eages of animals, such as crocodilians, to make it past multiple mass extinctions in
earth's history? How might burrowing aid future generations of modern animals to
survivehuman-influenced extinctions? Allsuchquestionsswirledaroundtherevel-
ation that at least maybe one dinosaur burrowed well before the last breaths of the
rest of its kin.
Digging up the Diggings of a Dinosaur
In September 2005, one month after learning about this dinosaur and its possible
burrow, my friend Dave thought it would be a good idea to have me come out to
Montana to look at the burrow with him. Despite my hesitation—thinking about it
for as long as three seconds—I found no reason to disagree with him. Fortunately,
