Intricate Details Of 'Good Mother Lizard' Dinosaur Revealed

How did the "good mother lizard," Maiasaura peeblesorum, live and die?

"The largest dinosaur population growth study in history" gives details of it, according to HNGN.

Scientists go into the intricate life history of a dinosaur that is well known, which could help us to learn a lot about other dinosaur species, according to Montana State University

"This is a dramatic step forward from studying fossilized creatures as single individuals to understanding their life cycle. We are moving away from the novelty of a single instance to looking at a population of dinosaurs in the same way we look at populations of animals today," said Jack Horner, curator of the Museum of the Rockies at MSU.

Scientists examined the fossil bone microstructure (histology) of 50 Maiasaura tibiae, which threw light on every factor in the growth of dinosaurs, their metabolism and also death.

"Histology is the key to understanding the growth dynamics of extinct animals," said study leader Holly Woodward. "You can only learn so much from a bone by looking at its shape. But the entire growth history of the animal is recorded within the bone."

Even though the dinosaur had "bird-like growth rates" in its life, there was a lot of similarity between its bone tissue as well as the modern large, warm-blooded animals such as elk.

In its third year it attained sexual maturity and attained a weight of about 2.3 tons when it turned 8 years.

Hence, after childhood, their "peak reproductive and physical fitness" could last for six years.

"By looking within the bones, and by synthesizing what previous studies revealed, we now know more about the life history of Maiasaura than any other dinosaur and have the sample size to back up our conclusions," Woodward said. "Our study makes Maiasaura a model organism to which other dinosaur population biology studies will be compared."

Now these social dinosaurs that lived in colonies have been given the interesting name of Maiasaura.

At first, they walked on two legs, but gradually switched to four. Their strange diet consisted of odd things such as rotting wood.

These discoveries indicate the start of the Maiasaura Life History Project, aiming to find out more about the life of the "good mother lizard".

The study was published in a recent edition of the journal Paleobiology.