This week has been awesome. Since starting this awesome adventure of helping out with a dinosaur related non-profit organization, I've stumbled on some really kick ass dinosaur art and a neat dinosaur article.
I'll start with the article, which I found at
Science Daily, about the study to find out how long it took dinosaur eggs to hatch.
According to the research done, they examined jaws of fossilized dinosaur embryos to look at the "growth lines" in their bones. Growth lines are formed in the bones of animals during their lives and are sort of like lines in a tree. You can count the rings to determine how old an animal is by the growth lines in their bones. From these lines, research has shown that it took
3-6 months for the sample species to hatch, which is an
insane amount of time in the animal world. Can you imagine having to guard a clutch of eggs that long?
To give you perspective, I did a brief Google search on how long it takes a couple different reptile and bird species to hatch their eggs:
Crocodiles: 80 days
Snakes: 45-60 days (depending on the species it seems)
Turtles: 70 days
Crows: 18 days
Finches: 12-14 days
Eagles: 35 days
Looks like on a reptile scale, 3 months is about average, but anything longer than that seems crazy. I looked into what's known about dinosaur egg incubation, since I remember there being an article about egg pores being studied last year.
I ran across this on
Earth Sky, which talks about how certain species of sauropods and earlier therapods probably buried their eggs like crocodiles, while later raptor species of therapods probably left their nests open like birds.
Which makes sense.
The dinosaur embryos in the Science Daily study was that of
Protoceratops and
Hypacrosaurus, a ceratopcian and a hadrosaur respectively.
- Favorite Paleo-Art of the week:
Cryolophosaurus from prepetualartistblock
Probably not what this handsome devil looked like, but holy crap I still love it. Cause he's an owl dinosaur. :3
Badass dinosaur art that's now my phone background by lioninthetrees
Citipati covering her nest by Julio Lacerda
This is especially cool because the holotype fossils for this dinosaur was found covering its eggs during death. It's pressumed that she was guarding her eggs when she and her babies died. She's been dubbed "big mama" because of this.
Sad story, but great picture.
Sleepy Alioramus by prepetualartistblock
I really
love the color scheme of this dude, plus he's adorable sleeping in the shade. Look at his little arms. SO CUTE.
Chris Pratt with accurate raptors by Lexicon Megatherium.
#SquadGoals
