Some of the most famous and best-preserved dinosaur fossils were thought to have been suspended in time due to a massive volcanic event like the Mt. Vesuvius eruption that literally froze Pompeii in stone.
But the cause of those dinos’ demise was likely much more mundane — collapsing animal burrows, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Two perfectly articulated skeletons of the sheep-size dinosaur Psittacosaurus, found in China's Yixian Formation. New research suggests they died in burrow collapses, not via volcanism, as previously thought. (Credit: Jun Liu, Institute of Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences)
Jun Liu, Institute of Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
A steady stream of fossil discoveries in northeast China in the 1980s triggered a paleontological “Gold Rush” — a “Dino Dash,” if you will. Subsequently, many of the bones discovered in what is now called the ...
