Baby dinosaur made tracks as it fled

[n2doc]

12 October 2009 by James O'Donoghue

ONLY just hatched and new to the world, the little guy who left these prints in the riverbed was probably running for its life. Barely 10 centimetres tall, the hatchling would have been the length of a wren and easy prey for pterosaurs and other hungry dinosaurs.

The prints are the tiniest dinosaur footprints ever found. They were left between 125 and 110 million years ago, are just 1.27 cm and 1.51 cm long, and clearly show soft foot pads and three pointed claws.

Kyung Soo Kim of Chinju National University of Education in Jinju, South Korea, says the baby track-maker was a cousin of the fearsome T. Rex and belonged to the theropod sub-order, which includes tyrannosaurs.

"It was running to hide right after hatching," Kim speculates. It had plenty of reasons to do so: nearby tracks show it shared its home with fleet-footed, meat-eating dromeosaurs, such as Velociraptor, together with other dinosaurs, pterosaurs and shorebirds.

more:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427293.800-baby-dinosaur-made-tracks-as-it-fled-for-its-life.html

[DoctorMyEyes]

1. awww...

He left his mark on the world despite his very brief life, didn't he?

[starroute]

2. The story doesn't say anything caught him

Just that he had good reason to scuttle for cover.

[DavidDvorkin]

3. True. He might have survived to grow up and eat other cute li'l hatchlings.

[starroute]

4. Some experts think Tyrannosaurs lived in family groups

Mother crocodiles incubate their eggs, help the babies struggle out of the shells, and look after them while they're little. There was even an article this week saying that crocodiles form long-term mated pairs like birds.

There was another article this week saying that many juvenile dinosaurs may have been misidentified as separate species because they are so different from the adults. Young tyrannosaurs, for example, were much more lightly built, with longer and narrower jaws and teeth that were made for slicing rather than crushing. My son said he'd seen something suggesting that tyrannosaurs even hunted in family groups, with packs of adolescents herding the prey to where the adults could finish them off.

So don't despair of our hatching here. There's no reason to assume he was either eaten by or an eater of his own kin. Tyrannosaurs were at the top of the food chain, they probably look care of their own, and they were far more likely to be finished off by injuries or disease than by each other.

[roguevalley]

5. awww. so cute. :-D

[DavidDvorkin]

6. I was thinking of hatchlings of some other species

I had assumed that he was running from some other kind of dinosaur, not one of his own kind.

Although, as far as that's concerned, there are animals that occasionally eat their own offspring or siblings, even in species that normally raise and protect their own young.

[Orrex]

7. If you ask me, that coin clearly disproves evolution and the so-called age of the Earth.