Re: Dinosaurs burrowed to keep warm

[Dann Pigdon <dannj@alphalink.com.au>]

Roberto Takata writes: 

> Could not Oryctodromeus just be trapped inside a lair of another organism?

I haven't read the paper itself, but apparently the robust forelimbs and 
structure of the jaw may be adaptations for some sort of digging activity. 
Of course, these same features would have been handy for scraping out nest 
hollows for surface-dwellers as well. I wonder whether the tails of these 
species were less stiffened than the 'average' hypsilophodontid? Going down 
a burrow with a long stiffened tail would seem to indicate a one-way trip. 
:) 

Even if they did habitually reside down burrows, it doesn't necessarily mean 
they dug the burrows themselves. There are plenty of extant organisms that 
use second-hand burrows. Wart hogs are a good example. They can't dig an 
entire burrow themselves, but they can modify existing burrows abandoned by 
other animals and use them as shelter. 

Burrow-dwelling snakes can't even modify burrows at all. They simply make do 
with what another species has provided for them. The giant tiger snakes that 
live on islands in Bass Strait south of the Australian mainland shelter in 
sheerwater burrows, often without even waiting for them to be abandoned. The 
tiger snakes feed mostly on sheerwater eggs which are only available for a 
couple of months a year (necessitating a nine-month fast). Adult birds are 
too large to be swallowed, as are the fast-growing chicks. The birds seem to 
tolerate the snakes in their burrows provided the eggs have already hatched. 
If a burrow were to collapse and kill everything in it, I wonder what 
palaeontologists would make of the scene in the future? Neither birds nor 
snakes have any obvious burrowing adaptations. 

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Dann Pigdon
GIS / Archaeologist         http://www.geocities.com/dannsdinosaurs
Melbourne, Australia        http://heretichides.soffiles.com
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