Researchers show dinos hatched eggs less efficiently than modern birds

Research using dinosaur body model suggests that – unlike modern birds – bird-like dinosaurs may have used the sun’s warmth to help hatch eggs, shedding light on the evolution of avian-style incubation.

Frontiers

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Lateral view of the clutch. The eggs were molded from casting resin. 

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Credit: Chun-Yu Su.

What do we really know about how oviraptors – bird-like but flightless dinosaurs – hatched their eggs? Did they use environmental heat, like crocodiles, or body heat from an adult, like birds? In a new Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution study, researchers in Taiwan examined the brooding behavior and hatching patterns of oviraptors. They also modelled heat transfer simulations of oviraptor clutches and compared hatching efficiency to modern birds. To do so, they experimented with a life-sized oviraptor incubator and eggs.

“We show the difference in oviraptor hatching patterns was induced by the relative position of the incubating adult to the eggs,” said senior author Dr Tzu-Ruei Yang, an associate curator of vertebrate paleontology at Taiwan’s National Museum of Natural Science.

“Moreover, we obtained an estimate of the incubation efficiency of oviraptors, which is much lower than that of modern birds,” added first author Chun-Yu Su, who attended Washington High School in Taichung when the research was conducted.

Building a dinosaur

The reconstructed oviraptor Heyuannia huangi lived between 70 and 66 million years ago in what today is China. Estimated to be around 1.5 meters long and weighing around 20kg, it built semi-open nests made up of several rings of eggs.

The incubating oviraptor’s trunk was made from polystyrene foam and wood for the skeletal frame and cotton, bubble paper, and cloth for the soft tissue. Eggs were molded from casting resin. In the two clutches used in the experiments, eggs were arranged in double-rings based on real oviraptor clutches.

“Part of the difficulty lies in reconstructing oviraptor incubation realistically,” said Su. “For example, their eggs are unlike those of any living species, so we invented the resin eggs to approximate real oviraptor eggs as best as we could.”

When the team ran experiments to find out if clutch attendance of a brooding adult or different environmental circumstances may have impacted hatching patterns, they found that in colder temperatures, where a brooding adult attended the clutch, the eggs’ temperatures in the outer ring differed by up to 6°C, which could have resulted in asynchronous hatching, a pattern where eggs in the same nest hatch at different times. In warmer conditions, the difference in egg temperatures in the outer ring was just 0.6°C, suggesting that oviraptors living in warmer conditions may have exhibited a different pattern of asynchronous hatching because they could use the sun as an additional, powerful heat source.

“It’s unlikely that large dinosaurs sat atop their clutches. Supposedly they used the heat of the sun or soil to hatch their eggs, like turtles. Since oviraptor clutches are open to the air, heat from the sun likely mattered much more than heat from the soil,” Yang explained.

Better hatchers?

The team also investigated how oviraptor incubation efficiency compares to that of modern birds. Most birds use thermoregulatory contact incubation (TCI), where adults sit directly on the eggs to transfer heat. TCI requires three prerequisites – the adult bird must be in contact with every egg, be the main heat source, and maintain all eggs within a constrained temperature range – which oviraptors didn’t fulfil. For example, their egg arrangement prevented the adult from making full contact with all eggs in the clutch.

“Oviraptors may not have been able to conduct TCI as modern birds do,” said Su. Instead, these dinosaurs and the sun may have been co-incubators – a less efficient incubation behavior than that displayed by modern birds. Yet, the combination of adult incubation and an ambient heat source – perhaps a behavioral adaptation associated with the evolution from buried to semi-open nests – isn’t necessarily worse.

“Modern birds aren’t ‘better’ at hatching eggs. Instead, birds living today and oviraptors have a very different way of incubation or, more specifically, brooding,” Yang pointed out. “Nothing is better or worse. It just depends on the environment.”

The team pointed out that their findings are specific to the reconstructed nest and are limited by the fact that today’s climate does not resemble the Late Cretaceous climate, which may have impacted the results. Oviraptors also exhibited a longer incubation period than modern birds.

Yet, the study advances our understanding of oviraptor brooding strategies through innovative approaches. It represents an important bridge between physics-based simulations and paleontological interpretations, potentially enabling paleontologists to investigate topics for which approaches were limited until now.  

“It also truly is an encouragement for all students, especially in Taiwan,” concluded Yang. “There are no dinosaur fossils in Taiwan but that does not mean that we cannot do dinosaur studies.”

Lateral view of the clutch with the incubator on top

Photograph of the generalized clutch after Experiment III.

Dorsal view of the incubator.

Credit

Chun-Yu Su.

The arrangement of thermometers in the incubation experiments. Thermometers 1 (with thicker outlines) were used in Experiment II. Thermometers 2 (with lighter outlines) were the additional thermometers used in Experiment III. The schematic presents a lateral view of the clutch and the incubator.

Credit

Su et al.,2026.

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Journal

Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution

DOI

10.3389/fevo.2026.1351288 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Heat transfer in a realistic clutch reveals a lower efficiency in incubation of oviraptorid dinosaurs than of modern birds

Article Publication Date

17-Mar-2026

‘We are all foreigners’: Japanese director casts dandelion seeds in migration tale

In her animated film Dandelion's Odyssey, Japanese director Momoko Seto explores the theme of migration – something seen across the natural world, as well as among human beings. Using detailed scientific imagery and a multi-layered soundtrack in place of dialogue, the film’s message is one of resilience.

Issued on: 15/03/2026 - RFI

'Dandelion's Odyssey' by Momoko Seto, which premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. 

© ECCE Films / Miyu Productions
03:23

By: Ollia Horton

Planet Earth is burning, with explosions going off left and right. In the midst of this chaos, four dandelion plants, fearing for their survival, lift off and float away into space to find a new home.

With this animated tale, Seto explores challenges seen in both the natural world and the human race: migration and the effects of climate change. Using the familiar image of dandelion seeds dispersed by the wind, she examines the fragility and resilience of both people and the world around them.

Trained at art school in France, Seto has previously made documentary films with the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), which led her to thinking about how to share scientific content with a wider audience.

'Dandelion's Odyssey' was released in France on 11 March. © ECCE Films / Miyu Productions

Seto began with making short films in a series called Planet, which became a template for the full length feature.

The music and sound production, by Nicolas Becker and Quentin Sirjacq, also play a significant role in Dandelion's Odyssey, which has no dialogue, allowing it to transcend barriers of age and language.

Seto credits Japanese culture with influencing her work in this regard, explaining that the "absence of words" is in itself a vital part of communication and that "silence is important between two people", to allow for sounds, body language and movement to also play their part.

DRC artist's film sheds light on link between colonialism and climate change

RFI met with director Momoko Seto at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. 

© RFI / Ollia Horton

Dandelion’s Odyssey was shot in France, Iceland and Japan over several months, with different teams and using various techniques, in a combination of 3D animation, live action and time-lapse footage.

The film zooms in on a miniature world that takes on giant proportions, one where a bee becomes as big as a helicopter and a praying mantis becomes a dinosaur stalking the earth, while a mushroom is seen as a towering tree.

For Seto, the process of migration, be it by humans, plants or animals, is an integral part of life – a natural phenomenon, to be embraced and accepted.

“We shouldn’t be barring people from entering to protect our territory, …saying you are a foreigner. No, we are all foreigners”

Shown as the closing film at the Critics’ Week at the Cannes Film Festival in 2025, Dandelion’s Odyssey went on to win the Fipresci International Film Critics Award, as well as taking prizes at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival and the Bucheon International Animation Festival in South Korea.

It was released in French cinemas on 11 March.

 

The fish were biting in ancient Alabama

Research collaboration uses high-tech scanning technology to reveal a bad-luck day for an ancient undersea predator

University of Tennessee at Knoxville

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Scientists discovered a huge tooth embedded in the neck of a fossil of a four-meter-long Polycotylus from the Mooreville Chalk of Alabama.

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Credit: University of Tennessee

The oceans of the Cretaceous of North America teemed with life. Gigantic fish and enormous marine reptiles hunted the Western Interior Sea. A unique new fossil reported today demonstrates rare evidence of direct conflict between these apex predators.

Scientists discovered evidence for this clash of Cretaceous titans tucked away in a specimen drawer in the collections of Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History. The fossil, a four-meter-long Polycotylus from the Mooreville Chalk of Alabama, held a hidden surprise in one of the bones: a huge tooth embedded in one of the animal’s neck vertebrae.

The specimen was noticed by Professor Christopher Brochu, of the University of Iowa Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, while taking a break from looking at fossil crocodiles.

“I sometimes look at other material to see if there’s anything I can show in my classes, and that’s when I saw the bitten vertebra,” said Brochu.

The violence of the bite, partnered with millions of years of burial, fossilization, and eventual excavation, had left the tooth crushed, broken at base and tip, and embedded inside the bone. The research team turned to technology to help identify the mystery attacker.

The fossil was scanned using computed tomography (CT), a visualization technique that allowed the research team to study the inside of the specimen without damaging it. The fossil was virtually dissected by two University of Tennessee, Knoxville undergraduates, Miles Mayhall and Emma Stalker, who built a three-dimensional model of a tooth from an unexpected culprit: an enormous bony predatory fish called Xiphactinus.

“We sometimes get these fixed ideas in our heads about who the top predator in any given environment is and who might rest a rung or two down on the food chain,” said lead author and paleontologist Stephanie Drumheller, a teaching associate professor from the Department of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences at UT. “This fossil is a good reminder that nature is rarely that cut and dry.”

It was unlikely that the Xiphactinus, as big as it was, was actually trying to eat the Polycotylus. Several famous “fish-within-a-fish” fossils seem to indicate that the predator likes to gulp down smaller fish whole. The embedded tooth could have been the result of the fight instead of a hunt. No matter the original motivation for the bite, its depth and location would have certainly proved fatal.

“Plesiosaurs are famous for their long necks, but those necks come at a price,” said coauthor Professor Robin O’Keefe, of the Department of Biological Sciences at Marshall University. “The trachea, esophagus, major arteries and veins, important nerves; all these organs lie vulnerable to attack. A bite to the neck by Xiphactinus would have certainly proved fatal to this animal, if the Polycotylus was not already dead.”

The dramatic evidence of this attack joins a whole host of other evidence known from Mooreville Chalk. Bite marks attributable from other bony fish, sharks, and marine reptiles are known from these rocks, painting a picture of a dynamic ecosystem with diverse predators targeting all sorts of prey, from other marine animals, to the occasional hapless dinosaur who was washed out to sea, to one another. Taken all together, these fossils suggest that swimming in these Cretaceous seas would have been a risky proposition for even the largest of these ancient marine predators.

 

The vertebrae fossils and scans of the unfortunate Polycotylus examined in this research, showing the embedded tooth of the Xiphactinus.

Credit

University of Tennessee

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Journal

Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology

DOI

10.1080/02724634.2026.2625732 

Article Title

A bite to the throat: A probable Xiphactinus attack on a Polycotylus from the Cretaceous Mooreville Chalk of Alabama, U.S.A.

Article Publication Date

12-Mar-2026

Oil Shocks And Crashes: Where Are We Headed With The 2026 Crisis? – Analysis

March 12, 2026 

360info
By Professor Peter Newman AO and Professor Ray Wills

On March 9, oil prices crossed US$ 100 a barrel for the first time in almost four years as the war in the Middle East between the US and Israel on one side and Iran on the other continued to escalate with no immediate end in sight.

Oil price shocks triggered by conflict in the Middle East have historically reshaped global energy systems. But the latest tensions around the Strait of Hormuz are unlikely to produce a long-term return to high oil prices.

The first oil crisis in 1973 shaped the lives of baby-boomers. The price of oil quadrupled overnight as Arab oil exporters targeted Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA. The second oil crisis, in 1979, followed the Iranian Revolution and panic buying set in as the oil price shot up. Then the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war reduced global oil supply even further, so the price rose dramatically right through the 1980s.

The latest outbreak of war in the Middle East has led to oil tankers being trapped in the Straits of Hormuz, and key producers such as Qatar, Iraq and Kuwait cutting production.


Our reading of both the data and history is that this crisis will reinforce the shift away from oil. If the current war blows out and creates a prolonged oil crisis of months rather than weeks, there will be more downward pressure on oil use – and an equal acceleration in China of electric car production at home, with an associated surge in exports.

The first oil shock disrupted daily life across many Western countries. Fuel shortages led to rationing, long queues at petrol stations and emergency conservation measures in several cities in the United States and Europe.

One of us experienced the oil crisis in the USA where San Francisco fell apart as fuel became scarce, 5 km long queues started at gas-stations and people began stealing from neighbours’ cars.

Australia was not targeted. But the ensuing global inflationary spiral began the pressure to look at using less oil. Former prime minister Malcolm Fraser hooked Australia to global oil prices to help us keep more aware of volatility in the market.

Fuel efficiency standards became mainstream and drove public awareness of oil dependence to new heights.

Long term plans to get off oil were dropped in 1990 when oil prices crashed back to the $40 range and business-as-usual returned to car sales and use. But in 2008 it rose to a record $147 as China began its growth spurt and US production declined. The resulting global inflation again triggered a collapse in economies and oil fell to the $30s in a few months.

These crises and crashes were not good for economies and thus the need to get off oil became a major global concern. Market volatility in critical functions like transport is never good for economies and when it was clear that a global climate policy also required oil to be replaced then the logic to get rid of fossil fuels became overwhelming. In 2016 the Paris Agreement accelerated the race to electrify transport through the net zero transition.
Towards a decline for oil?

An article by Professor Hussein Dia in The Conversation suggests we must accelerate the switch for all transport from oil to electricity. Certainly, there are plenty of people now driving big oil-guzzlers that will be very worried about their decision.


Others saw that the situation had changed as demand was now much less than in previous decades and there was indeed ‘a global glut of oil’.

It is possible that the days of sustained triple digit oil prices may be over.

Our approach to the future is to trace fossil fuel use and renewables to see how rapidly the energy transition is happening and to predict the future by taking the trends forward using the inflections to guide the exponential trends rather than taking simple linear predictions. The figure shows these trends.

Fossil and renewables consumption 1990-2025 and projection to 2030. Wills and Newman, 2025.

From our projections, renewable energy is quickly gaining momentum and will become the dominant global fuel source by 2030. The decline in oil as transport systems become electrified and fuelled by renewables, suggests oil is headed for dinosaur status.

As demand erodes, oil prices are likely to trend back towards something like $US 40-60 per barrel in the 2030s, not because the world has become more secure for oil, but because oil simply becomes less and less central to how we move people and freight.

For governments, cities and firms, the strategic response to the latest oil crisis cannot simply be to ride out the spike and hope for another crash. They must double down on electrification of transport, backed by rapidly expanding renewable generation and storage.

The world is choosing to depend on sunshine, batteries and wires rather than on unstable sea lanes and combustible geopolitics. The sooner we complete that choice, the less each new oil shock will matter.

About the authors and editors:

Professor Peter Newman AO is John Curtin Distinguished Professor of Sustainability, Curtin University.

Professor Ray Wills is Adjunct Professor at The University of Western Australia, and Managing Director of Future Smart Strategies.

Samrat Choudhury, Commissioning Editor, 360info

Source: This article was published by 360info

360info

360info provide an independent public information service that helps better explain the world, its challenges, and suggests practical solutions. Their content is sourced entirely from the international university and research community and then edited and curated by professional editors to ensure maximum readability. Editors are responsible for ensuring authors have a current affiliation with a university and are writing in their area of expertise.

Newfound Terrestrial Crocodile Fossil Redraws The Map Of Europe In The Age Of The Dinosaurs

Artist’s impression of the land-dwelling crocodile Doratodon carcharidens. This is what the now-extinct animal with its long skull and jagged teeth might have looked like. Illustration: Márton Zsoldos

 March 9, 2026

By Eurasia Review

A research team led by Dr. Márton Rabi from the Biogeology Department of the University of Tübingen, together with Máté Szegszárdi and Professor Attila Ősi from the Hungarian Eötvös Loránd University, is challenging the hypothesis that Europe remained connected to Africa during the age of the dinosaurs.

One argument for this is the great similarity between fossils of extinct crocodiles discovered in present-day Europe and species occurring in the same era in Africa and South America. If the primeval crocodiles were related, that would indicate a late separation of Europe from the southern continents. But after studying a more complete specimen of the crocodile Doratodoncarcharidens found in Hungary, the researchers concluded that its similarities with African and South American species did not arise from close kinship; instead, they were shaped by a similar way of life. This calls into question that key piece of evidence for a late separation between the continents. The scientific study has been published in the journal Scientific Reports.

During the Permian period, around 300 million years ago, the supercontinent Pangaea encompassed all of Earth’s landmasses. About 200 million years ago, Pangaea began breaking apart into its primary divisions: the northern Laurasia, containing Europe, North America and Asia; and the southern continent of Gondwana, including all the rest of the landmasses – according to geological models. “In contrast, paleontologists assumed that European fauna during the age of the dinosaurs shared most of its evolutionary history with species in North America as well as with those of the southern landmasses, including Africa and South America,” Márton Rabi says. On this assumption, Europe must have remained connected to Africa for longer than geological models indicate, meaning that “during the Cretaceous period, land animals could have moved freely between the now-separated continents,” Rabi says.

A key piece of evidence for this assumption is the spectacular-looking land-dwelling crocodile Doratodon carcharidens, whose remains have been found in Europe. With its deep skull and blade-like, serrated teeth, it resembled a carnivorous dinosaur. “These features had previously only been documented in African and South American crocodile species. Doratodon was therefore long considered an immigrant from the south, arriving overland,” Rabi explains. “However, we had only very fragmentary remains of Doratodon, just teeth and incomplete jaws.”

Fossil fragments of a single individual

Six years after discovering Doratodon remains in 85-million-year-old Cretaceous rocks at Iharkút, Hungary, in 2018, the research team made another discovery: “We found an upper jaw with the characteristic teeth and realized that it and the previously discovered partial skull fitted together perfectly,” reports Attila Ősi. “It was clear that it must have belonged to the same individual, and Doratodon finally took shape before our eyes.” The proportions of the skull and teeth suggest a modestly-sized but fearsome-looking crocodile, some 1.5 meters long, likely with long legs, and a dinosaur-like head. “At first glance, the new finds seemed to confirm the great similarity between Doratodon and some extinct crocodile species from Africa and South America,” says Ősi.

But a comprehensive analysis of Doratodon’s anatomical details and evolutionary relationships yielded an unexpected result. “It is not closely related to the southern crocodile species. Rather, it belongs to a group of crocodiles from North America and Asia that more closely resemble our current image of a crocodile,” says Máté Szegszárdi, a doctoral student and first author of the study. Doratodon’s similarity to African and South American forms has turned out to be a case of extreme evolutionary convergence. This term describes obvious similarities between unrelated species that have developed the same characteristics to adapt to similar ecological roles. “Upon re-examining other European species from this period, including dinosaurs that were previously thought to be immigrants from Africa, we found that their ancestry too needs to be reconsidered. These animals can be viewed as survivors of a once widespread ancestor from the time of the supercontinent. This seems more likely than the idea that they were newcomers, crossing the landmasses into Europe from the south,” Rabi says.

“Our findings suggest that the main division of the supercontinent Pangaea into the northern continent Laurasia and the southern continent Gondwana was important in the divergence of crocodile groups,” says Rabi. “We now assume an early separation of Europe – as part of Laurasia – from Gondwana during the Jurassic period, around 180 million years ago – which is in better agreement with geological models. Doratodon has, in a sense, redrawn the prehistoric map of Europe.”

“In paleontological research, findings are pieced together like mosaic tiles. This creates an increasingly complete picture, to which the researchers at the University of Tübingen make important contributions. This work by Dr. Rabi and his team shows how fundamentally our understanding of evolutionary history can change when new discoveries are placed in context,” says Professor Dr. Karla Pollmann, University of Tübingen president.