Feathered dinosaurs may have ‘flocked’ together like modern birds: study
EDMONTON – An ancient bone bed in a remote Mongolian desert presents tantalizing clues that dinosaurs of a feather may have flocked together for the same reasons modern birds do.
“We’re starting to realize how much birds have inherited from their dinosaur ancestors,” said Gregory Funston, a paleontologist at the University of Alberta and lead author of a paper published Monday in the journal Nature.
Funston and his co-authors have drawn their conclusions from an extensive bone bed of Avimimus fossils discovered a decade ago. The bed is likely to contain the remains of dozens of individuals of the feathered, warm-blooded, beaked dinosaur.
Scientists have long known that some dinosaurs lived together in groups but the Avimimus deposit is unique for two reasons.