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K-Strategy
By Nick Gardner
EXTERNAL: Forest at dawn
A lone egg lays in an abandoned nest deep within a Colorado forest. Something within the egg stirs. A fine line appears at the top of the egg. The egg stirs once again. The line moves down splitting off into multiple direction across the surface of the egg. Part of the egg cracks open on the side. A membrane tears as the fragments fall away. A tiny head peers through the crack. The rest of the egg continues to crack as the inhabitant breaks loose. A small Apatosaurus excelsus hatchling stands over the shattered egg. The newborn sauropod happily plods off towards a batch of ferns and begins feeding. MUNCH! MUNCH! MUNCH! It fills its infant stomach with crisp, fresh greenery. Suddenly, a branch breaks and a few leaves rustle as something approaches from behind. The hatchling becomes nervous and freezes. Its instincts tell it to listen for noises, or in this case, lack of. The forest remains filled with the calls and trumpeting bellows of dinosaurian fauna. The hatchling gradually calms and resumes feeding. Leaves rustle... SNAP! Its back is broken as a kicking sickle claw slashes into its torso and rows of sharp teeth snap shut over its neck. The predator's hand and foot claws pierce the hatchling's broken and lifeless body. Visceral fluids and blood drip from the teeth as the jaws open dropping the hatchling to the ground. The apatosaur was killed by a Koparion douglassi, a basal troodontid at least twice the sauropod's size. This particular one is a male as evidenced by his gracility. The troodontid plants his foot into the hatchling, his claws embedding into the carcass, and rips one of the legs off in via a severe raking of his multitoothed jaws on the appendage. This little predator has a big future overseas and one day its descendants will have trod across at least four of the seven continents.
Meanwhile, half a mile north of the nest, the rest of the hatchlings continue on grazing on the lucious vegetation. Sauropodomorphs are K-strategists, or in other words, they lay large numbers of eggs, knowing full well the possibility that many could be infertile or preyed on by small mammals, and even if they survive to hatching it doesn't guarantee that they will not be preyed on by maniraptoriform predators, but those that do survive will join the herds on the open Morrison plains. This is the gamble a mother takes when she is a K-strategist.
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Special thanks to Brad McFeeters for helpful discussion on the story & Mickey Mortimer for technical comments.
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Refs
Carpenter, 1999; Eggs, Nests, and Baby Dinosaurs
Chiappe, Salgado, & Coria, 2001; Embryonic Skulls of Titanosaur Sauropod Dinosaurs
Chure, 1994; Koparion douglassi, a New Dinosaur from the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic) of Dinosaur National Monument; The Oldest Troodontid ( Theropoda: Maniraptora)
Holtz, Brinkman, & Chandler, 1998; Denticle morphometrics and a possibly omnivorous feeding habit for the theropod dinosaur Troodon
Paul, 1988; Predatory Dinosaurs of the World
Perez-Moreno et al., 1994; A unique multitoothed ornithomimosaur dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous of Spain
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This story is © 2002 Nick Gardner.
8/25/2002 12:04:19 AM
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