Beneath the weight of 70 million-year-old rocks in Ganzhou City, China, lies the skeleton of a dinosaur nurturing its eggs.
This is the first fossil of its kind, as it shows an oviraptorosaur sitting upon a nest with ready-to-hatch embryos inside.
Matt Lamanna is a paleontologist and dinosaur researcher from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. He is part of an international team of researchers who studied the remains and published their findings in the Science Bulletin journal in December.
He spoke with As It Happens host Carol Off about the significance of this discovery. Here is part of their conversation.
Matt, how rare is a find like this one?
Oh, this is as rare as they come.
People have found a few dinosaurs sitting on nests with their own eggs before, and they’ve found plenty of nests that contain embryos. But this is the first time the two have been combined in one single, spectacular fossil.
So because the animal was fossilized in this position, atop a nest of eggs that contain oviraptorosaur embryos — presumably its own — we think that this animal perished in the act of incubating its nest.
What would it have looked like?
Imagine a big ground bird, like an ostrich. Or … if you’re familiar with something like a cassowary … an ostrich relative that lives in Australia and New Guinea that has a crust on its skull.
This animal would look something like a cassowary or an ostrich, except with long, well-developed four limbs that were tipped with three big claws.
This 70-million-year-old fossil shows an adult oviraptorid theropod dinosaur sitting atop a nest of its eggs. (Shundong Bi/Indiana University of Pennsylvania)
Wow. And so it had feathers, but it didn’t fly, right?
Absolutely.
Now, what is the oviraptorosaur actually doing at the moment that it’s fossilized?
It was fossilized in what we think is an incubating position…. We think this is probably just due to erosion.
The head and neck were lost, as was part of the back and the end of the tail. But the rest of the animal is there … the forelimbs, the high limbs, part of the torso, part of the tail, part of the neck. And what’s there is crouched in the middle of a nest with its arms wrapped around the outer edge of the nest … a position very, very similar to what you see many modern birds do when they’re sitting on their nests.
We presume it was female, right?
We actually tried to test this in our study, but the results were inconclusive.
The reason why I say it’s uncertain is that some modern birds, such as ostriches, take turns with the male and female incubating the eggs.
Although it’s quite possible that this was a female, it’s also possible that this was the dad. And we don’t know for sure.
If the embryos are fairly well-developed, how close were they to actually hatching?
[We observed] seven of the embryos … out of the 24 eggs. There may be more embryos inside some of those eggs — or maybe all of them. All of those embryos are at relatively advanced developmental stages, but they’re slightly apart from one another.
That suggests that maybe the eggs in the top layer of the nest — the layer that was closest to the adult — hatched a little bit before the eggs in the next layer, and so on and so forth. So we think that they were close to hatching, but they might not have all hatched at the same time.
A skeletal reconstruction of the adult oviraptorid shows its preserved bones in white. (Andrew McAfee/Carnegie Museum of Natural History.)
And this oviraptorosaur had 24 eggs?
Yeah.
We don’t really go into the reasons for this on the paper, but I sometimes wonder whether these animals may have nested communally, like the way ostriches do, for instance.
[With] ostriches, multiple females can contribute to the nest and then, a single pair — a male and female — take turns incubating that nest.
If some of these embryos are pretty close to hatching and it appears that this dinosaur, male or female, is incubating them, does it change any assumptions or theories about oviraptorosaurs and their young?
I would say it doesn’t change all that much, but it provides some of the best evidence yet that oviraptorosaurs, and presumably many what we call non-avian dinosaurs, did probably nurture their young.
For instance, a few oviraptorosaurs have been found sitting on nests before. But some people have claimed that in those cases, the animal perished while it was in the act of laying its eggs, or maybe the animal was guarding its nest in the fashion that, say, alligators and crocodiles do today. In other words, hanging around and protecting the eggs, but not incubating them.
The combination of circumstances preserved here … provide some of the best evidence yet that oviraptorosaurs and potentially other dinosaurs incubated their nests.
Matt Lamanna is a paleontologist and dinosaur researcher from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. (Carnegie Museum of Natural History)
To find this creature frozen in this moment with his or her young, what’s your theories as to how he or she died?
I’ll confess we didn’t really explore this question all that much in our study. But the rocks in which this fossil is preserved are mudstone. So in other words, it’s rock that’s formed from ancient mud, and seemingly quite a significant quantity of mud at that.
I sometimes wonder [if] something like a flash flood potentially [killed them]…. If that’s the case, if this animal hung around on top of its nest trying to protect its eggs to the very last as this flood was bearing down on it, starting to bury it in mud — I mean, that, to me, is devotion. That’s a devoted parent that’s doing everything it can to protect its offspring, even to the very end.
Written by Mehek Mazhar. Interview produced by Katie Geleff. Q&A edited for length and clarity.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
