Re: Dinosaur eggs

[NEIL CLARK <NCLARK@museum.gla.ac.uk>]

Sum wrote:

> What happens after dinosaurs laid their eggs?
> Are they like turtles where eggs are laid and
> then covered with sand/mud and allowed to hatch
> by themselves, or are they like birds where the
> eggs needs to be kept warm? Do dinosaurs actually
> sat on their eggs? Or do they do something totally
> different?  I have a hard time picturing a T-Rex
> sitting on its eggs.
> 
Sauropods even less likely to sit on their eggs.  The eggs I have 
been working on, although I haven't been able to do any work on them 
in the last year, were laid in an alluvial setting and covered by 
sediment.  This I assume would protect the eggs against the direct 
heat of the sun and keep them at a ?little varying temperature.  I 
undertand that there is some evidence elsewhere that nests were 
covered by vegetation to allow the warmth of the decomposing plants 
to keep the eggs warm.  As for dinosaurs sitting on eggs, I guess it 
depends on how much the body was covered in feathers.  I can imagine 
a _Tyrannosaurus_ squating down on some eggs like an ostrich if it 
had the feathers to protect them..... unlikely though?

Neil

Neil Clark
Curator of Palaeontology
Hunterian Museum
University of Glasgow
GLASGOW
G12 8QQ
Scotland/UK
email: NCLARK@museum.gla.ac.uk

'Man must surely have become an immensely worse animal 
than his teeth show him to have been designed for'
Hugh Miller (Cruise of the Betsey - 1858)