Golden Gate, South Africa
The earliest ever dinosaur nesting site has been discovered by paleontologists in South Africa. A team from the University of Toronto has uncovered sites in the Golden Gate Highlands National Park in the Free State, which date back to over 190 million years ago, the
Telegraphnewspaper reported. The site contains clusters of fossilised eggs, several of which hold dinosaur embryos. The Canadian team found ten separate nesting sites, some containing over thirty eggs. The find puts the new record at over 100 million years older than previous sites.”Even though the fossil record of dinosaurs is extensive, we actually have very little fossil information about their reproductive biology, particularly for early dinosaurs,” said Dr David Evans, the team leader and curator of vertebrate palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada.
Crucially, the sites reveal the dynamics of dinosaur parents and their young, Evans said. The fossils show that early dinosaurs cared for their young, and that mothers were protective of their brood and returned to sites more than once in their lifespan. The type of dinosaur is suspected to be Massospondylus, which grew to over six metres and was an an ancestor of long-necked sauropod dinosaurs
“This amazing series of 190 million year old nests gives us the first detailed look at dinosaur reproduction early in their evolutionary history, and documents the antiquity of nesting strategies that are only known much later in the dinosaur record,” said Dr. Evans.
