Parental feeding in the dinosaur Lufengosaurus revealed through multidisciplinary comparisons with altricial and precocious birds.

ABSTRACT: Previous studies arguing for parental care in dinosaurs have been primarily based on fossil accumulations of adults and hatchlings, perinatal and post-hatchlings in nests and nest areas, and evidence of brooding, the majority of which date to the Late Cretaceous. Similarly, the general body proportions of preserved embryonic skeletons of the much older Early Jurassic Massospondylus have been used to suggest that hatchlings were unable to forage for themselves. Here, we approach the question of parental care in dinosaurs by using a combined morphological, chemical, and biomechanical approach to compare early embryonic and hatchling bones of the Early Jurassic sauropodomorph Lufengosaurus with those of extant avian taxa with known levels of parental care. We compare femora, the main weight-b

SUBMITTER: Reisz RR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11366746 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature