Re: Dinosaur whodunit: Solving a 77-million-year-old mystery

[MKIRKALDY@aol.com]

In a message dated 11/16/2008 6:12:38 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
dannj@alphalink.com.au writes:

< I suppose I was thinking about how the eggs would behave while  loose on a 
substrate. Many 
ground-nesting birds that have little in the way  of a nest (plovers and 
terns come to mind) tend to 
have very cone-shaped  eggs to help them stop rolling away (instead they just 
roll in a tight circle).  
While rolling loose on a slight slope, they'd tend to some to rest  
blunt-end-down.>
 
Wouldn't it have been nice if the nest had been found and prepared by  
paleontologists, who would have recorded the provenance and noted the  
surrounding 
soils?  Since the nest was in a private collection and then at  a fossil 
dealer, that information must have been lost (I haven't read the paper  yet but 
the 
actual nest seems to have been about a half meter  across).  Also, perhaps the 
eggs that made the imprints had been sold  separately?  
 
Another point--I wish that people wouldn't announce these finds as a murder  
mystery or missing persons report or dance club, etc.  According to the  news 
reports, the mother dinosaur was gripped with indecision with rising river  
waters threatening her nest and had to make the heartbreaking choice to abandon 
 
the nest (her husband had been killed in the Cloneasaurus Wars).  
 
The only quote I saw that has anything to do with the  location is:
" 'Based on features of the nest, we know that the mother dug in freshly  
deposited sand, _possibly the shore of a river_, to build a mound against which 
 
she laid her eggs and on which she sat to brood the eggs,' Therrien said."   
(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27704545/)
 
That statement morphed into:  
http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/story.html?id=229d1d59-b909-4b3c-98a1
-a4aef5c00e1a
"Researchers still don't know the exact identity of the mysterious mother  
who abandoned the eggs 77-million years ago to the swelling waters on a sandy  
river beach, Zelenitsky said."
"But they have picked up clues of her reproductive habits."
"The mother dinosaur hunkered down on the banks of a fast-flowing river in  
the Montana badlands, said Francois Therrien, a co-investigator in the study 
and  curator of dinosaur palaeoecology at the Royal Tyrrell Museum."  (There  
were no quotation marks around the statements in the news  story.)
 
then:   
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/HealthSci/Did_dinosaur_mum_abandon_her_eggs/articleshow/3713328.cms
"WASHINGTON: Seventy-seven million years ago, did a dinosaur mother sat  
<sic> on a nest of a dozen eggs on a sandy river bank, brooding whether to  
abandon the unhatched offspring to vagaries of nature and scramble to  safety?"
 
Some news stories concentrated on which came first, the chicken or the egg  
(as overused in the dinosaur articles as "bones of contention").
 
Could the eggs already have hatched?  Maybe the dinosaur just  went for a 
walk and never returned?  Does there now have to be a drama  behind every 
dinosaur find?  Bah.
 
Mary
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