Dinosaurs were crawling sometimes after six months out of the egg
The eggs of some dinosaurs had a considerably longer breeding time than had been assumed. It lasted in some cases for three to six months before the young saw the light of day.
That researchers have unveiled Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The incubation period of the two species tested (protoceratops and Hypacrosaurus) seems more like reptiles than of birds sitting on the nest between 11 and 85 days. Reptile eggs of the same size usually need twice as much time before they hatch. The long incubation may have played a role in the extinction of many dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Because of this slow development they fell behind at much faster-breeding birds, which they are genetically most closely related, to mammals.
Scientists from Florida State University studied with modern scanning techniques and microscopes dental growth in embryos in fossil dinosaur eggs in the Gobi Desert and Canada.
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