Oviraptor Ruminations III

Return of the Oviraptor

From: "D. Tanke" <dtanke@dns.magtech.ab.ca>

Has anyone given consideration to the possibility that the AMNH "brooding Oviraptor" was neither shading the eggs nor keeping them warm, but in actuality trying to shield its eggs from the fierce sandstorm that quickly succeeded in overwhelming both the "parent" and its eggs? (How else could such a spectacular find be formed?). It would be interesting to know if any work was done on the orientation of the eolian sands at this particular site, and whether the animal was facing directly into the wind or turned completely the opposite direction. Some animals today will face either into the strong wind or turn around so their rumps face upwind. The Oviraptor may have originally buried the eggs under a thin sand layer and was sitting guarding the site when the sandstorm hit. Tyrrell staff that went to the Gobi Desert in the late 1980's experienced some of these sandstorms and have told me they experienced much loose blowing sand near the ground surface, with visibility reduced to virtually nil. An Oviraptor at or near its nest when the sandstorm struck may have just "hunkered down" in familiar surroundings, in this case its nest.

From: ornstn@inforamp.net (Ronald Orenstein)

As a matter of fact I have thought about this myself - in fact it seems self-evident that whatever else the oviraptor was doing before the storm it must have certainly been reacting to it to some degree at the moment of its death. The problem is that I do not see what this proves. Obviously a find of this sort is a snapshot in time and gives us no information whatever about the frequency or duration of adoption of such postures by a nesting oviraptor, or the reason why it might have done so at times other than at the time of death. Any such assumptions are speculations. However, the fact is that the animal did not adopt a haphazard posture but one that seems closely analogous to a bird's brooding posture. This suggests to me that the posture was a normal part of the animal's behavior, not a sudden unusual response to extraordinary circumstances. Whether its function was to shade the eggs, warm them, hide them, guard them from predators, or protect them from regularly blowing sand seems impossible to say (but the first two seem the most likely, even if only by an "if it walks like a duck..." argument).

From: "King, Norm" <nking.ucs@smtp.usi.edu>

Several commentators on this list seem to be of the opinion that the recently discovered "brooding oviraptor" was buried during a sand storm. First question: Have sedimentologic studies demonstrated the eolian nature of the sediment immediately surrounding it? Second question: Do we have sedimentologic data on any of the other remarkable Mongolian finds, such as the Velociraptor and Protoceratops buried while engaged in mortal combat? I'm having trouble accounting for the latter by a gradual burying in wind-borne sand.

From: Thomas_R_HOLTZ@umail.umd.edu (th81)

In various SVP presentations over the last couple of years, Dave Fastovsky, the AMNH team, and Dave Unwin have all shown the aeolian nature of some of the Djadochta and Djadochta equivalent deposists. Similar discoveries are reported for Inner Mongolian equivalents in papers by Jerzyckiwiecz (okay, I can't remember the exact spelling: apologies :-( ) in the must-have October-November 1993 issue (which came out in the Spring of 1994) of Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences.

All have found Protoceratops hunkered down, oriented with the wind, and occasionally specimens which had died while digging upwards through the sand. In the case of the fighting dinosaurs, Unwin presented evidence that they were buried by a collapsed dune.