These Dinosaurs Were Good Parents!
© De Agostini Picture Library—De Agostini/Getty Images
Which animals make the most caring parents? Dinosaurs may be on the list. Scientists have found evidence that some dinosaurs carefully selected the food they gave their young.
Researchers at Ohio State University learned what dinosaur families ate by studying the wear and tear on the teeth of a type of duck-billed dinosaur called Maiasaura. Maiasaura, which lived in North America about 80 million years ago, was an herbivore. This means it ate plants, not animals.
The researchers found differences between the wear and tear on adult Maiasaura teeth versus juvenile (young) teeth. Adult teeth showed that dinosaur parents often ate stems and leaves, which are fairly hard to chew. Juvenile teeth suggested that young dinosaurs were eating softer fruits.
John P. Hunter, Christine M. Janis, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 2026 (CC BY 4.0)
This photo shows casts, or molds, of the teeth of newly hatched Maiasaura dinosaurs.
This suggests that Maiasaura, and maybe some other dinosaur species, didn’t just stay with their young and feed them. They may have also given their young foods that were softer but more nutritious while saving the tougher foods for themselves. Another possibility is that Maiasaura parents gave regurgitated food to their young. When food is regurgitated, it is partially digested by animal parents.
Scientists know that bird parents feed their young in this way—and they’re already aware that dinosaurs are related to today’s birds. It’s possible that Maiasaura acted more like modern birds than anyone realized.
Click the video below for a closeup of a mother bird feeding her young!
© ittipol/stock.adobe.com
Birds feed their young with care.
