Dinosaur flock discovery shows the killer reptiles were NOT ‘solitary vicious monsters’ but lived in social groups like modern animals
DINOSAURS were not "solitary vicious monsters" but social animals that lived and died together in flocks, scientists say.
New research flies in the face of long-held assumptions that the killer reptiles were all solo predators.
A publication on the dinosuar avimimus suggests they were gregarious and social animals after palaeontologists found a large number of bones at one site.
It is the first evidence that bird-like reptiles such as avivimus - which grew four feet tall and lived around 65-100million years ago - formed flocks like modern birds.
Researcher Gregory Funston of the University of Alberta said: "The common mythology of dinosaurs depicts solitary, vicious monsters running around eating everything.
"Our discovery demonstrates that dinosaurs are more similar to modern animals than people appreciate.
"Although the players are different, this evidence shows that dinosaurs were social beings with gregarious behaviour who lived and died together in groups."
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The discovery comes from a site in Mongolia, first encountered by palaeontologists a decade ago.
The site contained thousands of shards of destroyed bone - telltale evidence fossil poachers had got there first.
After conducting additional field work, scientists discovered a "bone bed" with an assemblage of avimimus dinosaurs trapped in the rock where they died together.
The says there are very few juveniles - suggesting a transient herd or flock of adults had gathered in one place away from their nests at the time they were killed by some natural event.
Funston, who has travelled to Mongolia several times to work on the material, said: "With an assemblage like this, you can't really understand why the dinosaurs died together unless you see the field site.
"We can tell that they were living together around the time of death, but the mystery still remains as to why."
It is the first evidence of gregarious behaviour in oviraptorosaurs, a type of bird-like dinosaur found in the region.
Scientists say the discovery highlights a potential trend of increasing social behaviour in dinosaurs towards the end of the Cretaceous Period - which ended with a mass extinction of dinosaurs around 66million years ago.
Funston said: "There are groups of dinosaurs that become social towards the end of the Cretaceous.
"What still remains to be solved is whether this increasing trend is based on dinosaur behaviour or if it's because of how the fossils were preserved."
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