re:babies and ecology

["Angie Sherer" <holocene_1@hotmail.com>]

I attended a lecture by Bakker last year at the Out of the Rock Paleo fest 
in Rockford, where he discussed the nursery finds. If memory serves me 
correctly, the spent teeth were from a Velociraptor The teeth from the 
babies were smaller than a match head. There were bones that showed signs of 
being gnawed on by the infants. And I mean GNAWED. There was a slide, and it 
looked like some animal was really chewed the heck out of it. Much in the 
same way a dog will just gnaw on a soup bone (of shoes). The same bones also 
had huge teeth marks of an adult of the same species.
I remember the pubic boot hole being mentioned, and being used as an 
argument for evidence of family packs that 'took care' of the wounded 
animal. Bakker believed a stegosaur smacked the Velociraptor right where 
it'd hurt, thereby crippling it (and who wouldn't be!!) The injury shows 
signs of being infected, and there is infection pathologies further up the 
spinal cord. It seems the infection spread to the (this is from memory) 
vertebrae above the lungs. This led him to believe that there was some care 
taking going on. According to Bakker, the animal could not hunt for its 
self, and yet is still lived long enough for the infection to spread and get 
really nasty, and leave huge pathologies all over the spine.

It's been a year, though. Maybe some further studies have been done, and my 
information is out of date, so please take it with a grain of salt.
Did not hear the part about it representing one breeding season, so thanks.

I left the lecture a little early, so this is where I'll stop! Hope this 
helps.

Angie.
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