A new study detailing 29 ancient dinosaur eggs is offering insight into their nesting habits and how they preceded modern birds and crocodiles.
According to Live Science, the 150 million year old dinosaur egg remains showed evidence the nests were made with dirt and vegetation, whereas some of the smaller therapods utilized open nests.
The researchers published their study in the journal PLOS One.
"Nest structures are usually not preserved in the fossil record, making it difficult to determine if dinosaurs buried their eggs during incubation like crocodiles, or if they were incubated in more open nests as in brooding birds," study co-author Kohei Tanaka, of the University of Calgary, told FoxNews.com. "There are many papers that seek the incubation method of dinosaurs, but our research is one of the most comprehensive studies in that it analyzes large datasets on the eggs of both living and fossil species."
The researchers were able to make a link between dinosaur nesting habits and those of alligators and modern birds, which are dinosaurs' closest living relatives.
"We were surprised that although previous studies on the eggs of oviraptorids suggested they were buried, our results reveal that their eggs were exposed similar to modern bird nests," Tanaka said. "Our results suggest that the change in nesting style occurred in small meat-eating dinosaurs that are closely related to birds.
"To better understand dinosaur nesting styles, however, future discoveries of fossil eggs will hopefully fill in the gaps in the dinosaur family tree where eggs are currently unknown."
