Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
our little ornithopod was sitting in line behind a number of other, much larger dino-
saurs, which accordingly take much longer to prepare.
Finally, at one point, Dave told me that only a
Triceratops
skull preceded our
specimen in the queue. Having this big, sexy, and geologically younger dinosaur
prepared before ours seemed a little unfair to me, like the doorman to an exclusive
clubliftingaropetoletitinwhileallofthenot-so-hotdinosaurs,includingourlittle
ornithopod, stood out in the rain. Also, the preparator assigned to our dinosaur was
well known for her precise and meticulous craft in separating dinosaur bones from
rocks.Thuswebegantotalkabouttheamountoftimeitwouldtakehertocomplete
the extraction of a
Triceratops
skull, which changed the meaning of “
Triceratops
skull” to a unit of time in our minds.
Ourpatience wastried butrewarded, andbig-time. Preparation ofthedinosaur
yielded a few shocks, but the good kind. As I told people later, it was like celebrat-
ing Christmas on your birthday. The first shock came when Dave sent me an e-mail
message in which he relayed the news from Montana:
There's another dinosaur in there, a juvenile
.
The adult dinosaur had a youngster in the presumed burrow chamber with it,
and it was of the same species. Although not as complete as the adult, some of its
limb bones were there and they matched the adult's bones in form. Based on relat-
iveproportionsoftheirlimbbones,thejuvenilewasabout55to60%thesizeofthe
adult, the equivalent of a growing teenager who was still hanging out in the burrow
with Mom or Dad. This discovery thus had huge implications related to dinosaur
behavior. An adult with a half-grown juvenile in a burrow was not only evidence of
denning—a previously unknown behavior in dinosaurs—but also of extended par-
entalcare.ThelattersyncedbeautifullywithpreviousworkdonebyDave'sadvisor,
Jack Horner, who had proposed that
Maiasaura
raised its young in their nests until
they were large enough to fend for themselves.
