Re: "DINOSAUR SOCIAL WARMTH"

["Ray Stanford" <dinotracker@earthlink.net>]

    Rob Gay, Randy Irmis, and Jordan Malon have helped jog my memory, so
here is a book reference that might be of significance to this discussion:

    THE DINOSAUR PROJECT (ISBN 0-921912-46-3) by Wayne Grady (The Ex Terra
Foundation, Edmonton, and Macfarlane Walter & Ross, Toronto) tells about,
and shows color photos of, two Pinacosaurus (an ankylosaur) quarries found
in the Gobi desert.  Of one of the quarries (two-page color photo located in
the photo section between pages 150 and 151), we are told in the photo
caption: "The second Pinacosaurus quarry contained seven juveniles,
including four complete skeletons.  Phil [Currie] speculates that...these do
not appear to have struggled.  All seem to be lying peacefully side by
side."

    If Currie's observation about the group of juvenile Ankylosaurs having
died without a struggle, "peacefully", is correct (and I have do reason to
doubt it), this does, indeed, sound very much like how people often die due
to hypothermia. I wonder that, perhaps, dinosaurs might go through the same
kind of just going peacefully to sleep and dying.  Had a sand storm been the
sole cause of death, it is hard to imagine why there are no signs of a
struggle by any of the Pinacosaurus.

    Admittedly, this does not prove a case of "dinosaur social warmth", but
it is suggestive of that.  In such a perspective, it might be well to keep
our physical and mental eyes open for further possible examples.

    Thanks Rob,Randy, and Jordan, for your help.

    Ray Stanford