Dinosaurs Were Doting Parents, Fossil Find Suggests for National
Geographic News |September 8, 2004| A newly announced dinosaur
discovery in China suggests that the prehistoric creatures put
in some quality parenting time. Last year researchers unearthed
the fossil remains of a Psittacosaurus, a plant-eating,
parrotlike dinosaur that grew to be a meter (three feet) tall.
The adult was surrounded by 34 juveniles, a close association
that indicates that the dinosaur continued to care for its young
even after they hatched from eggs. The discovery suggests that
the care that crocodiles, birds, and other modern descendents of
archosaurs give to their young may be an ancestral
characteristic. (Archosaurs are a subclass of reptiles that
includes dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and crocodilians.) "People often
thought that parental care evolved in birds. But now we're
accumulating evidence for parental care in dinosaurs," said
David Varricchio, an assistant professor of earth sciences at
Montana State University in Bozeman. T