Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, November 4, 1994 TAG: 9411040097
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
In Mongolia's Gobi desert, they have found a preserved nest, estimated to be 80 million years old, containing a grapefruit-sized egg with the first known embryo of a meat-eating dinosaur and, among eggshell fragments in the same nest, two tiny skulls - probably from embryos or newborns - of a very different species of predatory dinosaur that may be Velociraptor.
How, the scientists want to know, did the two species get into the same nest?
Did a parent of the unhatched embryo kill two baby Velociraptors and bring them to the nest for food, much as a modern osprey or eagle would?
Could the two young predators have come to the nest on their own, intending to eat the egg?
Or were some dinosaurs like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in the nests of other species, leaving their young to be hatched and raised by surrogate parents?
``The whole thing is really intriguing and it indicates what may be a very, very advanced form of parental care,'' said Mark A. Norell, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Norell was a leader of the American-Mongolian expedition that discovered the nest and is the first author of the group's report in the new issue of the journal Science.
The embryo is of a species called Oviraptor, a long-necked, two-legged predator that was about 6 feet long. Velociraptor, the species made famous in the movie ``Jurassic Park,'' was a little larger. Both were built something like ostriches with arms and tails.
All the species in the nest belong to the therapod wing of the dinosaur family, from which modern birds evolved. Norell said he thinks these dinosaurs already had developed the form of nesting and parental care that is familiar in birds today.
by CNB