Scientists have exposed a 70-million-year-old nest filled with the ruins of baby protoceraops dinosaurs. The nest of 15 juvenile Protoceratops andrewsi dinosaurs provides clues regarding the dinosaurs' premature behavior. At the same time as large numbers of eggs have been connected with other dinosaurs, such as the meat-eating oviraptor or sure duck-billed hadrosaurs, finding numerous juveniles in the similar dino nest is pretty rare.
Fastovsky and his classmates analyzed the dinosaur leftovers along with the nest, which calculated about 70 centimetres in diameter and was about and bowl-shaped. All were establish at Djadochta configuration, Tugrikinshire, Mongolia, where it's supposed sand "quickly besieged and entombed" the youngsters whereas they were still alive. The researchers finish that the 15 dinosaurs all explain juvenile characteristics. These comprise short snouts, proportionately big eyes, and a lack of adult characteristics, such as the famous horns and large trappings connected with adults of this species. And the smallest amount 10 of the 15 fossil sets is complete.

The nest and its contents entail that protoceratops juveniles remain and grow in their nest for the period of at least the premature stages of postnatal growth. The nest additional implies that parental care was provided. The large number of issue, however, also suggests that juvenile dinosaur humanity was high, not only from predation, but also from a potentially demanding situation.
"Large control may have been a way of ensure endurance of the animals in that location — even if there was wide parental care," says Fastovsky. "Mongolia was, at the instance, a place with a range of theropod dinosaurs, a number of who probable ate babies such as these." "The majority obvious of these establish in the same deposits, is the (in) famous velociraptor, a smallish nasty theropod with bad breath, for whom babies such as these must have made a nice bon bon," he continues.
Yet an additional discovery earlier found at the similar locality is the famous "fighting dinosaurs" sample in which a protoceratops and velociraptor come into sight to have been sealed together "sheltered in what was obviously mortal combat," Fastovsky adds.