Carnivorous dinosaurs had bird-like nesting behavior.

From fossils, American scientists said they discovered a small North American dinosaur that looked quite like a bird and had a similar way of incubating eggs.

The new discovery, published in the journal Paleobiology, has revealed the evolutionary link between birds and dinosaurs that became extinct millions of years ago.

A dinosaur researcher at the University of Calgary with a clutch of eggs from this species. (Source: huffingtonpost)

The closest living relatives of dinosaurs are crocodiles and birds. So to find out whether dinosaurs buried their eggs completely in nesting material like crocodiles, or left them partially exposed like brooding birds, researchers from the University of Calgary and the University of Montana carefully examined the fossilized eggshells of a small carnivorous dinosaur called Troodon.

Through research, scientists discovered that this special dinosaur species laid its eggs almost vertically and buried only the bottom of the eggs in the mud.

Additionally, Troodon eggshells were similar to those of oviparous birds, suggesting that the animals did not completely bury their eggs under nesting material like crocodiles during incubation.

Scientists know that crocodiles and birds that bury their eggs completely to hatch have many pores and tiny openings in the shells of their eggs, allowing respiration to take place. Unlike birds that incubate their eggs without burying them completely, their eggs have very few pores in the shells.

The researchers counted and measured the number of pores in Troodon eggshells to assess how much moisture escaped through Troodon shells compared to the eggs of modern crocodiles and birds. The eggshells showed that Troodon dinosaurs did not completely bury their eggs, like birds.

They are quite optimistic about their research method because it can be applied to fossil eggs of other dinosaur species, to discover how these eggs were incubated.

This extraordinary study now provides evidence that carnivorous dinosaurs had bird-like nesting behavior and evolved before birds. It also adds to the very close evolutionary relationship between the two animals./.

According to (Vietnam+) - VT