It appears even dinosaurs had to cut loose, footloose.
A new study claims to have discovered a dinosaur mating “dance arena” in Colorado. Researches examined markings in the area and determined that they were caused by something other than digging for food or water or marking their territory.
“These trace fossils, we interpret them to be evidence of dinosaur courtship activities, just from kind of process of elimination,” the study’s co-author Caldwell Buntin tells ABC News. “Basically, these were a lot of organisms that were coming together, performing some kind of activity that would include building some kind of nest to display to a female, and then maybe doing some kind of a dance or scraping activity, which generates a lot of the scrapes around the nest display structure.”
Buntin points to marks that are “associated with a step backward” and “indicating a counterclockwise or a clockwise turn.”
“Basically, they will dig out a nest display, basically a fake nest, to be able to show a female that, ‘Hey, I’m a strong male. I can dig this. I can make a good, strong place for you to lay your eggs,'” Buntin says. “And then when a female comes to visit, they’ll perform a dance which consists of kind of bowing, bobbing, raising their wings out, creating some scratches around the sides of that display nest.”