Oops!

Apparent Wrong Identification Snowballs

The 31 October 1997 issue of Science reported that field paleontologist John Horner (the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana) misidentified dinosaur eggs when they were discovered in 1979. Then, he and colleagues put eggs and the accompanying bones together, as they were assumed to rightfully belong, in the same classification. The error was briefly noted in Nature 5 September 1996, and again at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontologists, as reported in Science. Mark Norell, dinosaur curator (American Museum of Natural History in New York City) recalled that in 1923 Roy Chapman Andrews made a similar mistake when classifying Protoceratops (presumed to be herbivorous) eggs from a find in Mongolia. Norell re-identified those findings based on chemical composition and gross appearance comparisons to eggs he identified from a new site in 1993 (Science 4 November 1994, p. 779). Now, both finds are classified as Oviraptor (said to be carnivorous).

"Oviraptor (so named because it was originally thought to be an egg predator) is now thought to have brooded its eggs, but Troodon may have displayed even more advanced behavior. The Orodromeus remnants found around the clutches were not fragments of dead juveniles, Horner says, but were instead the remains of animals delivered to the nest by a Troodon parent to feed its young. While such advanced social behavior is common in birds, it is not often associated with dinosaurs."

There are a lot of behavioral assumptions in all this that are open for dispute. Both the Mongolian and the Montana specimens included eggs, embryos, and accompanying bones that were more mature. They are classified as familial in one case, and as culinary in another. Seemingly, much is conjecture. The reason any of this is important here, is the apparent scientific corroboration of the 1993 and the 1923 discoveries. The outcome is that the kind of egg associated with Protoceratops, or whether Protoceratops laid eggs at all, is open to question.

The accuracy of the drawing accompanying the web page What Hatched This Spring, based on reports and artist's drawings of the 1923 results, is similarly suspect. Neither Horner, Andrews, Norell, nor this author were around when these magnificent creatures were. The drawing could have been quietly pulled but, here also, public correction of an apparent mistaken identity is appropriate.

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