This behavior is common these bird species, and the discovery suggests that bipedal carnivorous dinosaurs called theropods did a hundred million years ago, the researchers said.
Martin Lockley of the University of Colorado Denver, said that dinosaurs probably were apparently males-groups and “frantically scraping” the floor with her legs three fingers with claws to attract mates.
The animals were like younger versions of the tyrannosaurus. The footprints near the grooves suggest that had different sizes, the maximum of about five meters from snout to tail tip.
The grooves are up to two meters long.
It would have been fun to watch the ritual, Lockley said. “These animals were in a state of frenzy.”
theropod dinosaurs
- The theropods are saurischians suborder of dinosaurs that lived from the late Triassic to the present (from about 228 million years ago in the Carnian), in which today is America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Antarctica.
Lockley, professor emeritus of geology, is author of a paper released Thursday by the publication Scientific Reports .
The grooves were discovered at three locations in western Colorado and west of Denver.
The dinosaur specialist Thomas Holtz Jr. of the University of Maryland, who was not involved in the work, said it is reasonable to think that theropods opened the grooves. But it was mating motif? Holtz said he was not convinced that the work had definitely ruled out other explanations.
But he added there was no reason to rule out the idea of mating.
“Whatever the behavior recorded here, is an expression of the fact that dinosaurs, like all animals, did more to hunt and attack and eat and fight and all those behaviors assigned to them popular culture, “Holtz said in an email.
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