Troublesome teens

Like teenagers today, some juvenile dinosaurs used to hang out together. Also like teens, the dinos sometimes hung out in places they shouldn’t have.

The evidence comes from of a herd of young birdlike dinosaurs that died when they became stuck in mud on the margins of a lake about 90 million years ago, according to a team of paleontologists that excavated the remains in the Gobi Desert in western Inner Mongolia.

The sudden death of the herd in a mud trap provides a rare snapshot of social behavior in dinosaurs. Composed entirely of juveniles of a single species of ornithomimid dinosaur (Sinornithomimus dongi), the herd suggests that immature individuals were left to fend for themselves when adults were preoccupied, perhaps with nesting or brooding. Read more here or here.

Tags: Paleontology, Science