Dinosaurs May Have Been Socializing Nearly 200 Million Years Ago
The New York Times
A trove of fossilized eggs and skeletons in Argentina revealed that some dinosaurs likely traveled in herds and socialized by age.
Paleontologists have found the earliest known evidence that dinosaurs lived in herds — unlike reptiles, and more like penguins and other birds do today — and socialized with each other by age groups.
The scientists, working a rich deposit of fossils at a site in Argentina’s province of Santa Cruz, at the southern tip of South America, found more than 100 eggs and the skeletons of 80 individuals ranging in age from embryos to adults.
All of the fossils, including the embryos inside the eggs, are of the species Mussaurus patagonicus. These dinosaurs were about 10 feet high and 26 feet in length when fully grown, with a long tail balanced by an equally long neck that ends in a head that seems too small for the enormous animal it is attached to. This is the only place Mussaurus remains have ever been found.
