Fossil trackways could present tyrannosaur tykes teaming up
Paleontologists know little about what big, bone-crushing tyrannosaurs have been like as infants. Hatchling fossils are uncommon and supply few hints about these foot-high carnivores’ conduct. However now miniature trackways, present in rock roughly 72 million years outdated, provide proof that child tyrannosaurs traveled in pairs.
Paleontologists first discovered the trackways throughout a riverbank survey of southwestern Alberta’s St. Mary River Formation. The positioning is rife with tracks made by many dinosaur species—“a busy time on the seaside,” as Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology researcher Donald Henderson and his colleagues describe it within the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences. Among the many fossil footprints are seven miniature dinosaur trackways suggestive of people transferring in pairs. “The type of the small tracks, in addition to the tempo lengths, is an effective match to what might be produced by hatchling [tyrannosaurs] Albertosaurus or Gorgosaurus,” Henderson says, noting that the tracks’ pointed claw ideas counsel a predator.
Current information about tyrannosaur conduct comes largely from fossilized bitten bones and some scarce tracks. Injured skulls present that tyrannosaurs fought by biting each other on the face, and trackways present in British Columbia point out that adults generally socialized collectively. “Tyrannosaurs weren’t simply chompy, killing macho machines,” says fossil observe skilled Lisa Buckley, who was not concerned within the new research. The newfound tracks trace that hatchlings shaped teams after leaving the nest, just like some herbivorous dinosaurs—in addition to residing crocodiles and enormous floor birds.
Buckley says it’s attainable the tracks got here from a unique carnivore sort, however both means the invention provides to what’s identified of dinosaur lives. “Irrespective of which theropod group was accountable,” she says, “the footprints on this paper are fascinating as a result of they present proof of group conduct.”
This text was initially printed with the title “Dino Buddies” in Scientific American 327, 6, 17 (December 2022)
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1222-17
