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Baby dinosaurs, that is.
Based on a fossil from India scientists from Michigan have described a 67 million year old snake found curled up in a sauropod nest. The 3.5 meter long serpent, which has been named Sanajeh inidcus, swirls around the eggs in the nest and points its fossilized skull towards the remains of a 50 cm long sauropod hatchling. The question is; was the snake really hunting for sauropod youngsters when it was surprised and buried by a mudslide (or an ashfall or something to that effect)? Or did the corpse of a snake that had died elsewhere wash into the nest by accident during a local flood? The scientists who describe Sanajeh think it died on the spot while hunting. They base this on the way its body curls into a lifelike position with its head on top of its body and on the very fine preservation of the eggs and skeletons.
This is an excellent example of the importance of taphonomy - the study of what has happened to a fossil specimen between the time of death and the time of fossilization. Taphonomy is absolutely necessary for palaeontologists to consider, when they want to derive clues about how the animal looked, lived, and died. Was the animal buried in its natural environment or was it moved after death? Was the animal buried quickly or did it dry in the sun for a week first? Did it rot and twist into a position its body could never have taken when it was alive? Were the bones scattered and crushed by scavengers or by geological processes? And so on..
I’ll recommend Ed Young’s breakdown of the finding of Sanajeh at his blog Not Exactly Rocket Science. He also describes the interesting history of how it took 17 years from excavation until the importance of the fossil was understood.
So... what do you think? Please leave me a comment.
There is also a few other possibilities. The parent could have put the snake there as food sort of like birds feed their young, or it could have been killed and placed there by a parent to scare away egg predators. We will probably never know for sure because the decay rate of different animals can be so different and I don’t think science can judge this yet
One possibility which I`m sure they are considering is that the snake was after the eggs. Modern egg snakes can break thier jaws open almost 180 degrees to allow the egg to get past it. Other snakes simply break the eggs open by constricting till it burst in it`s grip. An egg about to hatch would have been a prime meal. Even nowdays if you raise a large amount of chickens you will learn about chicken snakes by experience.
Rickymouse: The scarecrow idea is brilliant! I don’t know if that kind of behaviour has ever been observed in nature. The food-for-the-youngs idea is also rather radical. Grown sauroods are assumed to be exclusively herbivorous (except; I know that some researchers once suggested that Diplodocus might have been feeding on shellfish in lakes and estuaries). But the youngs could have had a different diet from that of the adults. Also, sauropods seem to have descended from theropod-like omnivores. There could have been some ‘Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’-thing going on, with sauropod youngs growing out of an ancestral omnivore state and into full herbivore state as they mature. Still, sauropods are usually accused of displaying no parental care, leaving their eggs immediately after laying them. I don’t know how factbased that concensus is, though, but it leaves little room for feeding and protective behaviour. …Both your suggestions could actually be tested. If snakes with signs of broken bones (trampled or bitten by parent sauropods) are repeatedly found in sauropod nests for instance, or if sauropod hatchlings are found with the bones of a carnivorous meal preserved in the belly. ..unless of course the youngs simply stripped non-fossilizing meat from the bones without leaving any dental marks on the victim. It would be tricky to prove, then.
Jspencer: The article actually touches on the egg thieve thing. Sauropod eggs were rather big and Sanajeh couldn’t open its mouth as wide as modern snakes. But they propose that it might have crushed the eggs first by constricting them with its body, and then eaten the content.
phrase ‘curled up’ as refers to snake could speak volumes if clarified.
Unlikely death occured elsewhere if found immortalized in a coiled position.
And the cure incidentally for egg thiefs is what used to be called a ceramic egg/fired clay later polymers were used…hard on the digistion system