I was watching one of those "extinction of the dinosaur" documentaries the other night, and something occurred to me. When did our ancestors - ie the early mammals - start to learn to raid nests for eggs? Many modern reptiles, like turtles and snakes, abandon their eggs after laying them (albeit modern turtles bury theirs on beaches). If dinosaurs exhibited similar lack of parenting instinct, and if there were no egg-eating predators, why would they, then a sudden change in mammalian behaviour - to start raiding nests and eating all the eggs - could significantly reduce a breeding population of dinos pretty rapidly, couldn't it? Could also explain why some of the dinosaurs that were theorised to look after eggs in the nest - like oviraptors - are the most likely evolutionary link to modern birds, who all nest and raise their young.
Just got me thinking, if this theory has legs, maybe the meteorite strike alone wasn't the sole reason they were wiped out, and could explain why some other species "made it through" that event, like crocs and sharks.
Just got me thinking, if this theory has legs, maybe the meteorite strike alone wasn't the sole reason they were wiped out, and could explain why some other species "made it through" that event, like crocs and sharks.
Comment