ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 21, 1995 TAG: 9512210100
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: C7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LOS ANGELES TIMES
A FOSSIL OF A 9-FOOT dinosaur may prove they and birds share complex behavior.
In Mongolia's Gobi Desert, scientists have discovered a unique fossil of a carnivorous dinosaur nesting on its eggs like a brooding bird, revealing for the first time how Earth's most fiercesome parents may have tenderly cared for their young.
The 80 million-year-old fossil is graphic testimony that the nesting behavior so common among birds today originated long before modern feathers and wings, reinforcing the intimate evolutionary link between birds and the long-extinct dinosaurs. It proves they share complex behavior, several dinosaur experts said, in addition to important anatomical features.
Indeed, the sandstone fossil of a 9-foot, beaked carnivorous dinosaur called an oviraptor, preserved with a nest and a brood of unhatched young, is the sole direct evidence of any dinosaur behavior, experts said.
Until now, scientist could only make educated guesses about parental care among dinosaurs, by studying fossil nests and juvenile dinosaurs. The fossil of the oviraptor on its eggs offers the first concrete proof that dinosaurs actively protected and cared for their young, said researchers from the American Museum of Natural History and the Mongolian Academy of Sciences, who made their find public Wednesday.
``What makes this specimen so spectacular is that, while there is a lot said and a lot written about dinosaur behavior, there is very little real evidence,'' said Mark A. Norell, associate curator of vertebrate paleontology at the American Museum, who led the team that discovered the bones. ``This is about the only piece of hard evidence we have.''
David B. Weishampel, a dinosaur expert at Johns Hopkins University, called the discovery ``astonishing and incontrovertible evidence.'' Jack Horner, curator of paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Mont., said it was ``the strongest evidence of some kind of parental attention.'
Norell and his colleagues, like many dinosaur experts, are convinced that all modern birds are the direct descendants of a group of meat-eating, bipedal dinosaurs called theropods, a group that includes the oviraptor, the rapcious velociraptors made famous in the novel ``Jurassic Park'' and the tyrannosaurus rex. Many ornithologists disagree. Several said the fossil was unconvincing, circumstantial evidence.
LENGTH: Medium: 51 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Prehistoric parenting APby CNB