Did Dinosaurs Show Parental Care?

An embryo of the hadrosaur Maisaura, fossilized.

One of the main things that attract me and so many other people to the domain of Paleontology more than other domains in biology or earth science is the fact that it's mysterious. I mean, although there have been various revolutions which have contributed to a wider understanding of life on earth millions - or billions - of years ago, we still don't know much. Many old questions have stayed unanswered for years, while new ones emerge every year. One of these is if dinosaurs showed parental care. Now, we don't know much about this topic, at least in a general image. I am however going to provide you with various ideas on the topic along with explanations. Enjoy!

Bracketing

Bracketing is a method scientist may use to find common characteristics between ancient and modern animals. To do bracketing, we will need, let's just say 3 closely related groups, two of which will be extant and the other extinct. Now, if the two extant groups have a common characteristic, we could suggest the extinct one does too. So, using bracketing, what do we get?

First, we have to get something to bracket the dinosaurs with. In our case, we will use birds (which are still dinosaurs) and crocodiles, because they're the only living Archosaurs we have to compare. Of course, most if not all of the members of these representative groups do indeed show parental care, although not all in the same way. So, according to bracketing at least, dinosaurs and all other extinct Archosaurs could indeed show parental care.

Fossil Evidence

Although Bracketing is an interesting and probably accurate approach, it isn't gonna prove much without fossil evidence. I mean, we quite literally wouldn't have known about dinosaurs if we hadn't found their fossils, so why not check any fossils too?

Above is a heartbreaking in my opinion fossil of a (probably) female Citipati taking care of her eggs. This fossil was originally thought to belong to "Oviraptor" yet it actually turned out to be a completely different dinosaur. Fun fact, the Oviraptor was named "Egg thief" because it was also found taking care of eggs, yet the paleontologists originally thought they belonged to a protoceratops and that the Oviraptor tried to steal them! 

Another dinosaur, known as Maisaura had been found fossilized over a nest of already hatched hatchlings, suggesting that these dinosaurs, although completely different than the above, did share the factor of parental care 

Alright folks, I think that's it for today! Again, this post is more of a personal belief rather than general knowledge since this whole topic is controversial. If you have a different opinion, feel free to Express it in the comments! See you!

Thanks for Reading!

I hope you guys enjoyed this post, oh, and I am making a new ebook for y'all!

Image sources: Wikipedia

Info sources: Wikipedia, Michael J. Benton's "The Dinosaurs Rediscovered"