Photo by GeneVH on Flickr
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Learn Before You Go
- Scientific Name: Maiasaura
- Pronunciation: MY-yuh-SAWR-uh
- Name Means: Good mother lizard
- Diet: Herbivore
- Fossils Found: Hundreds of fossils of Maiasaura from babies to adults have been found in the Western United States and Canada.
- Wikipedia: Maiasaura
All in the Family
Although we only show one Maiasaura and her nest here, Maiasaura remains have been found that show that they nested in colonies. The nests were scattered just far enough apart so the adults protecting each one wouldn’t touch tails.
Notice on the trail that there is a Troodon lurking beside the Maiasaura, eyeing her hatchling.
Skeletal reconstruction of a Maiasaura. Maiasaura was the first dinosaur found to exhibit parental care.
What We Can Learn From Fossils of Nests
There are two types of growth strategies in birds today, which can also be tracked back to dinosaur behaviors. One is called precocial, which means the birds are able to leave the nest as soon as they hatch. Today, ducks and geese are examples of birds that exhibit precocial nesting patterns.
In contrast, the babies of Maiasaura were altricial, meaning they required parental care. Altricial babies, like Maiasaura, spend a lot of time in the nest after hatching and rely on their parents to bring them food until they are able to get up and move around on their own. Fossil evidence of Maiasaura nests contained lots of crushed eggshells, which clued paleontologists into the fact that Maiasaura babies were altricial and the adults must have cared for them in the nests for a while after they hatched, hence the origin of their name "good mother lizard." Flamingo colonies today are good examples of altricial nesting arrangements very similar to that of the Maiasaura from about 77 million years ago.