Predatory dinosaurs performed a ritual, bird-like dance to woo their mates, according to paleontologists who have studied huge scrape marks left behind by the animals in western Colorado.
(...) “We know they had feathers and crests and good vision,” Lockley said, speaking of theropods, the carnivore family of Tyrannosaurs rex. “They were visual animals, but there’s never been any actual physical evidence that their anatomy and behavior was co-opted for fairly energetic display. This is physical evidence.”
The roughly 50 scrape marks were found in 100m-year-old sandstone, in irregular groupings that look like the display arenas some birds gather in to compete for mates. The scrapes run in five- and six-foot patterns that resemble the traces left behind by courting birds.
In a paper published on Thursday in Scientific Reports, Lockley and his co-authors compared the patterns to those left by puffins and ostriches, and deduced that the marks did not represent nests or digging for water or food.
(...) The exact species of dinosaur that may have danced is unknown, but Acrocanthosaurus, a gigantic, ridged-back theropod that lived in the wetlands of western North America in the Cretaceous, is a suspect. Tracks attributed to the species resemble dinosaur prints found near the leks.
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