Re: Troodontid skulls in other nests: the answer

[Jura <pristichampsus@yahoo.com>]

Um, did you just unintentionally scoop Norell?

Jason
 
----- Original Message -----
> From: Jason Brougham <jaseb@amnh.org>
> To: Dinosaur Mailing List <dinosaur@usc.edu>
> Cc: 
> Sent: Friday, 8 July 2011 2:14 PM
> Subject: Troodontid skulls in other nests: the answer
> 
>T here was a recent feature on Mark Norell in the Wall Street Journal:
> 
> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304447804576411911713825824.html
> 
> It includes a photograph (the second photograph, halfway down the page) of a 
> troodontid nest and one nearly complete hatchling, minus skull. The hatchling 
> is 
> IGM 100/1003, and it is assigned to Byronosaurus jaffei. This same material 
> was 
> displayed at the AMNH in 2000:
> 
> http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/fightingdinos/ex4.html#
> 
> I asked Mark about these specimens and he told me some amazing facts, some of 
> which were already published in the 2009 Bever paper on the Byronosaurus 
> skulls. 
> He blew away our whole debate on DML about how the Byronosaurus  skulls IGM 
> 100/972 and IGM 100/974 could have gotten into the nest of Citipati, IGM/979. 
> 
> It turns out that the Byronosaurus nest  was collected two years  after the 
> Citipati nest, and just two meters uphill and laterally from the famous  
> Citipati nest at the Xanadu sublocality of Ukhaa Tolgod. The Citipati nest 
> was 
> at the end of a drainage course from the Byronosaurus one, so the troodontid 
> material must have tumbled down and come to rest in the depression of the 
> lower 
> nest.
> 
> When we had our debate about this on DML I entertained several scenarios but 
> at 
> one point I suggested that we need not resort to any explanations that 
> included 
> biological interaction. By biological interaction I meant scenarios where the 
> Citipati fed on perinate Byronosaurus, or vice versa, nor nest parasitism. I 
> thought that sheer proximity of nests in a perennially occupied nesting 
> ground 
> could explain how debris from one nest lands in another. 
> 
> Dr. Norell is preparing to publish this information, inclu
but he is a darned busy guy. I thank him for sharing this preliminary 
> information with those of us who were dying to know.
> 
> 
> Jason Brougham
> Senior Principal Preparator
> American Museum of Natural History
> jaseb@amnh.org
> (212) 496 3544
>