Mass Dino Graves Suggest Young Banded Together

March 19, 2009 -- New findings on mass dinosaur graves, where several juveniles died together, suggest that young dinosaurs banded together to improve their chances for survival, according to two new studies.

Together, two new studies present three gory ways in which the young dinosaur groups probably met their end: mud traps, droughts and predators.

Paul Sereno, a University of Chicago paleontologist, and his team studied the remains of a herd of more than 25 young, bird-like dinosaurs of the species Sinornithomimus dongi that died together 90 million years ago at what is now the Gobi Desert.

"These animals died a slow death in a mud trap, their flailing only serving to attract a nearby scavenger or predator," Sereno said, explaining that plunging marks in the mud surrounding the skeletons recorded the dinosaurs' failed attempts to escape while predators picked away at their fleshy hips.

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"I was saddened because I knew how the animals had perished," added Sereno, whose findings were published in Acta Palaeontologica Polonica. "It was a strange sensation and the only time I had felt that way at a dig."

Researchers Timothy Myers and Anthony Fiorillo of the Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at Southern Methodist University focused their attention on two other juvenile dinosaur fossil sites, which are described in a paper that will be published in next month's Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.

The first, at Mother's Day Quarry in Montana, contains the remains of several young sauropods that died en masse during the Upper Jurassic. Skin impressions indicate soft tissue was still present when the animals were buried at the site.

"During droughts, modern animals tend to cluster around water sources," Myers told Discovery News. "The herd of sauropods preserved at the Mother's Day Quarry may have done the same."