Reconstruction of oviraptorid clutches illuminates their unique nesting biology

Yang, Tzu-Ruei; Wiemann, Jasmina; Xu, Lei; Cheng, Yen-Nien; Wu, Xiaochun; Sander, Martin

doi:10.4202/app.00497.2018

Cited by 23 publications

(51 citation statements)

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“…degree of long bone ossification; Weishampel et al ., 1993); sometimes ‘adults’ are diagnosed as such simply from being associated with the nest (e.g. Yang et al ., 2019). Gravid, and therefore reproductively mature, individuals have been reported among several groups [e.g.…”

Section: Methods Of Assessing Maturitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing ontogenetic maturity in extinct saurian reptiles

et al. 2020

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Morphology forms the most fundamental level of data in vertebrate palaeontology because it is through interpretations of morphology that taxa are identified, creating the basis for broad evolutionary and palaeobiological hypotheses. Assessing maturity is one of the most basic aspects of morphological interpretation and provides the means to study the evolution of ontogenetic changes, population structure and palaeoecology, life‐history strategies, and heterochrony along evolutionary lineages that would otherwise be lost to time. Saurian reptiles (the least‐inclusive clade containing Lepidosauria and Archosauria) have remained an incredibly diverse, numerous, and disparate clade through their ~260‐million‐year history. Because of the great disparity in this group, assessing maturity of saurian reptiles is difficult, fraught with methodological and terminological ambiguity. We compiled a novel database of literature, assembling >900 individual instances of saurian maturity assessment, to examine critically how saurian maturity has been diagnosed. We review the often inexact and inconsistent terminology used in saurian maturity assessment (e.g. ‘juvenile’, ‘mature’) and provide routes for better clarity and cross‐study coherence. We describe the various methods that have been used to assess maturity in every major saurian group, integrating data from both extant and extinct taxa to give a full account of the current state of the field and providing method‐specific pitfalls, best practices, and fruitful directions for future research. We recommend that a new standard subsection, ‘Ontogenetic Assessment’, be added to the Systematic Palaeontology portions of descriptive studies to provide explicit ontogenetic diagnoses with clear criteria. Because the utility of different ontogenetic criteria is highly subclade dependent among saurians, even for widely used methods (e.g. neurocentral suture fusion), we recommend that phylogenetic context, preferably in the form of a phylogenetic bracket, be used to justify the use of a maturity assessment method. Different methods should be used in conjunction as independent lines of evidence when assessing maturity, instead of an ontogenetic diagnosis resting entirely on a single criterion, which is common in the literature. Critically, there is a need for data from extant taxa with well‐represented growth series to be integrated with the fossil record to ground maturity assessments of extinct taxa in well‐constrained, empirically tested methods.

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Section: Methods Of Assessing Maturitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing ontogenetic maturity in extinct saurian reptiles

et al. 2020

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“…Along with diverse invertebrate fossils, vertebrate egg fossils are calcium carbonate-based biominerals (Mikhailov, 1997;Cusack and Freer, 2008;Pérez-Huerta et al, 2018). Calcium carbonate of fossil eggs not only provide reproductive paleobiological information of amniotes (Grellet-Tinner et al, 2006;Tanaka et al, 2015;Varricchio and Jackson, 2016 and references therein;Yang et al, 2019) but also afford paleoenvironmental and taphonomic information overprinted in the eggs (Grellet-Tinner et al, 2010;Montanari et al, 2013;Angst et al, 2015;Moreno-Azanza et al, 2016;Graf et al, 2018;Kim et al, 2019; see also Montanari, 2018 and references therein). Modern avian eggshells are mostly composed of calcite (96%) with a rare amount of organic matrix (2%) and trace elements such as Mg, P, and S (Hincke et al, 2012;Dauphin et al, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Raman Spectroscopy Detects Amorphous Carbon in an Enigmatic Egg From the Upper Cretaceous Wido Volcanics of South Korea

et al. 2020

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Raman spectroscopy has been widely used in micropaleontology and organic geochemistry to identify carbonaceous materials and evaluate their thermal maturity in fossils or metasedimentary rocks. Meanwhile, fossil egg researches have mostly focused on biomineralized calcite, but preserved carbonaceous (or possibly organic) materials inside the eggshells have been usually neglected until recently. Here we report an enigmatic egg from the Wido Volcanics (Upper Cretaceous) of South Korea that was analyzed using diverse methods including polarized light microscope, scanning electron microscope, electron probe microanalyzer, electron backscatter diffraction, and Raman spectroscopy. The eggshell not only shows the crystallography of archosaurian eggshells but also contains peculiar dark bands, which were previously known as the trait of fossil and modern Crocodyliformes eggshells. Raman spectroscopic analysis showed that the dark bands are mainly due to amorphous carbon, as evidenced by the clear graphite (G) and disordered (D) bands. The deconvolution of amorphous carbon peaks and resultant parameters made it possible to infer the paleotemperature inscribed in the eggshell. The result suggests that preserved amorphous carbon in the fossil eggshells can be identified using Raman spectroscopy and Raman parameters may make it possible to compare the thermal maturity of spatiotemporally diverse fossil eggshells. The biogenicity of the dark band is not clear because Raman spectroscopic analysis is not sufficient to confirm biogenicity. However, overall distribution of the dark band may imply the biogenic origin. It is apparent that the material of this study is not a dinosaur egg but might belong to a crocodyliform or choristoderan egg, and even other non-dinosaur archosaur can be a candidate as well.

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“…Relatedly, recent research by Yang et al (2019b) suggests that oviraptorosaur nests may have been incompatible with contact incubation. The authors reconstruct a volcano-shaped multitiered nest that they argue was likely too large for the adult to effectively cover with its body.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is also important to note that hatching synchrony could have varied significantly among species of oviraptorosaurs. Yang et al (2019b) note that their model does not readily align with any modern-day nests. It is even possible that a temperature gradient could have reduced hatching time discrepancy too, as the bottom eggs (though laid first) might have experienced cooler temperatures than their later-laid but warmer upper-level siblings.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Do paleontologists dream of electric dinosaurs? Investigating the presumed inefficiency of dinosaurs contact incubating partially buried eggs

Hogan¹,

Varricchio²

2020

Paleobiology

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Troodon formosus, a theropod from the Late Cretaceous, is one of the few species of dinosaurs with multiple nest sites uncovered. It has been consistently demonstrated that eggs within these nests would have been partially buried in life—an exceedingly rare state in modern vertebrates. There has been debate over Troodon's capacity to engage in thermoregulatory contact incubation, especially regarding an adult's ability to efficiently supply partially buried eggs with energy. An actualistic investigation was undertaken to determine the thermodynamic efficiency of contact incubating partially buried eggs. An efficient system would keep eggs at temperatures closer to the surrogate parent than the ambient, without prohibitively high energy input. For the experiment, a surrogate dinosaur was created and used in both indoor controlled ambient temperature trials and in an outdoor variant. Even with ambient temperatures that were likely cooler than Cretaceous averages, the results showed that contact incubating partially buried eggs did seem to confer an energetic advantage; egg temperatures remained closer to the surrogate than ambient in both indoor and outdoor tests. Still, critics of contact incubating partially buried eggs are correct in that there is a depth at which adult energy would fail to make much of an impact—perhaps more relevant to buried eggs, as partially buried eggs would be in contact with an adult and likely above the thermal input threshold. Additionally, results from this experiment provide evidence for a possible evolutionary path from guarding behavior to thermoregulatory contact incubation.

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Reconstruction of oviraptorid clutches illuminates their unique nesting biology

Cited by 23 publications

References 51 publications

Assessing ontogenetic maturity in extinct saurian reptiles

Assessing ontogenetic maturity in extinct saurian reptiles

Raman Spectroscopy Detects Amorphous Carbon in an Enigmatic Egg From the Upper Cretaceous Wido Volcanics of South Korea

Do paleontologists dream of electric dinosaurs? Investigating the presumed inefficiency of dinosaurs contact incubating partially buried eggs

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