Fossilized nest belonged to meat-eating dinosaur

CALGARY—Southern Alberta researchers say they’ve figured out how meat-eating, egg-laying dinosaurs feathered their nests in a way that links them more closely to birds.
A fossilized nest found in the early 1990s in northern Montana initially was thought to be that of a commonly-found duck-billed dinosaur, or hadrosaur, said University of Calgary paleontologist Darla Zelenitsky.

“I looked at it a couple of times and I realized it wasn’t a duck-billed dinosaur nest,” Zelenitsky said yesterday.
After carefully probing five fossilized eggs found with the nest, the researchers believe it is a breeding spot of a small meat-eating dinosaur—either a caenagnathid or a small raptor known as a dromaeosaurid.
“It’s the first nest of its type known in North America and probably the world,” said Zelenitsky, her hand resting on the flat centre of the grey, indented mass of stone flecked with lichen.
“We don’t really know why, but it’s extremely rare.”
She said there’s been only one other type of meat-eater nest found in North America. The Royal Tyrrell Museum acquired the nest from a private Calgary owner and will display it at the end of August.
Zelenitsky said they think the dinosaur mother fashioned it from a sandy mound and laid its eggs two at a time in a ring-like pattern around its side.
Erosion washed away some of the eggs—leading scientists to suspect the mother had to make a decision on whether to abandon her eggs as water rose.
But enough of the eggs and nest remained to firm up the link between the reptiles and birds, said Zelenitsky.
The findings have been published in the journal “Palaeontology.”