'Staggering number' of titanosaur nests discovered in India reveals controversial findings about din

'Staggering number' of titanosaur nests discovered in India reveals controversial findings about dino moms

By Joshua A. Krisch published about 16 hours ago

The discovery of a tightly packed nesting ground from the Cretaceous period in India suggests that titanosaurs laid eggs and left their offspring behind.


About 70 million years ago, titanosaurs the length of school buses stomped through what is now west central India to lay their eggs by a riverbank. While these long-necked sauropods and the river are long gone, many of their nests remain intact, full of fossilized dinosaur eggs that reveal clues about how these massive herbivores nested and laid their eggs, and whether they took care of their hatchlings.

The nests, in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, are packed together so tightly that it's possible that titanosaur mothers abandoned their young soon after laying their eggs, so as not to crush their broods underfoot while navigating that narrow space, according to the study, published Jan. 18 in the journal PLOS One(opens in new tab).

The researchers based the findings on the discovery of 92 nesting sites holding a total of 256 eggs, which were likely laid by six titanosaur species, they reported in the study.

"The sheer number of clutches and eggs means that there is a huge dataset to unpack in the coming years," Michael D. D'Emic(opens in new tab), an associate professor of biology at Adelphi University who studies dinosaur evolution but was not involved in the present study, told Live Science in an email. However, he noted that it's unclear whether these eggs were laid at the same time or over many years, so it's unknown how tightly packed the "active" nests were.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/titanosaur-eggs-india