Discovery of “babies” dinosaurs still in their nest in Mongolia – Le Parisien

14 Oct. 2015, 11:03 p.m. | Update: 14 Oct. 2015, 11:03 p.m.

Discovered in this area famous for its wealth of dinosaur fossils dating the late Cretaceous (between 70.6 and 65.5 million years), scientists describe three or four specimens of perinatal Saurolophus angustirostris dinosaurs, and two fragments of eggshell.
Saurolophus angustirostris or “crested lizard”, were large herbivorous dinosaurs, up to twelve meters long and weighing over two tons. Many of their skeletons, well preserved, have been discovered.
Baby dinosaurs were probably in their nest, installed on a sand bank of a river, when they died, say paleontologists of Ghent University and the Royal Institute of Natural Sciences of Belgium. Their work is published in the American scientific journal PLOS ONE.
The length of the baby skull Saurolophus is about 5% that of the larger adult specimens known, which indicates that they should be in the early stages of development.
Their bones already showed characteristics Saurolophus angustirostris including a nose oriented upwardly. But these very young specimens had not yet developed the characteristic peak of their species, and different parts of the skull have not yet fused.
“The near absence of development of the ridge in these infants provides saurolophini Genetic clues about the growth of the ridge in these dinosaurs, “notes Leonard Dewaele, a co-author of the study.
” The Saurolophilis are the only dinosaur sauropod family to have a crest on the skull when they are adults, “he says.
The researchers did not determine whether these three or maybe four specimens were still in the egg, or if they had just come out of when they are dead. But they were already partially decomposed when they were buried in the sediment of the river during the summer season was wet.
fragments of fossilized eggshells found with them closely resemble those already found in the same family Saurolophus angustirostris in Mongolia. According to these scientists, this suggests that these “babies” could help saurolophini to fill the gap in knowledge on the development of Saurolophus angustirostris

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