The socio-sexual behaviour of extant archosaurs: implications for understanding dinosaur behaviour

Evolution of parental incubation behaviour in dinosaurs cannot be inferred from clutch mass in birds

“…This adds evidence to the debate on developmental maturity across dinosaur clades [13,14]. Although this particular analysis appears robust, we would be cautious in applying it to larger dinosaurs as the Aves have never achieved the truly giant sizes observed in many dinosaur clades [15], and there is some debate about what constitutes clutch size in some large dinosaurs [16].…”

Juvenile-only clusters and behaviour of the Early Cretaceous dinosaur Psittacosaurus

“…Juvenile-only clusters may reflect particular aspects of reproductive cycles, population size, resource distribution, or environmental conditions that favour segregation of adults from their young (Main and Coblentz 1996). Care of the young can be costly for many modern species, especially of birds and mammals, and so those species that do not care for their young after hatching gain by conserving energy that would otherwise have been required to defend and provision their offspring (Isles 2009). Juveniles that are abandoned after hatching or birth, as is commonly the case in groups other than birds and mammals, then gain the advantages already noted by aggregating in clusters.…”

Giants on the landscape: modelling the abundance of megaherbivorous dinosaurs of the Morrison Formation (Late Jurassic, western USA)

“…This scenario would instead, like that described in the preceding paragraph, seem more consistent with skeletal outcome 1, and with the hypothesis that Morrison megaherbivores had high metabolic rates, but with the proviso that Morrison megaherbivores lived in herds (cf. Isles 2009). If so, their ecosystem impact across the Morrison landscape could have been as great as in the preceding scenario, but would correspond to the roving hot-spot situation described above.…”

“…Most of the immatures presumably 'disappeared down the gullets' (Farlow and Holtz 2002: 255) of various-sized carnivorous dinosaurs and other predators, particularly if post-hatching parental care was limited (Isles 2009), and so were lost to the fossil record.…”