Fossil Discovery in Colorado Reveals New Details About Dinosaur Mating
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content.
The world's largest-known dinosaur mating display area may have been found hiding in plain site at Colorado's Dinosaur Ridge site.
Once a tidal flat, this region would have been periodically flooded millions of years ago.
Past studies had already identified a few "lekking" spots here—areas where dinosaurs are thought to have performed elaborate courtship displays, similar to those seen in modern birds like sage grouse or manakins.
However, high-resolution drone imagery captured by the U.S. Geological Survey in 2019 and 2024 allowed researchers to re-analyze a little-studied area at the ridge's base.
They found something far more significant than seen before: a sprawling area covered in dozens of scrape marks, suggesting the entire site may have once been a massive dinosaur lek—essentially a prehistoric mating dance floor.
Three allosauruses—dinosaurs that lived in Colorado millions of years ago—kick up dust
Three allosauruses—dinosaurs that lived in Colorado millions of years ago—kick up dust
Daniel Eskridge/iStock / Getty Images Plus`
Dinosaur Courtship, Written in Stone
The tracks identified belong to a type of fossil trace known as Ostendichnus, created by bipedal, non-avian theropod dinosaurs roughly 100 million years ago during the Cretaceous period.
These dinosaurs—likely between 2.5 and 5 meters long—dug into the sand with their claws, dragging and kicking to leave long, trough-like or bowl-shaped marks.
These markings came in different shapes—some long and narrow, others more circular or bowl-shaped—suggesting a mix of behaviors: not just dancing, but also potentially nest-building or testing the ground for suitable nesting sites.
Some patterns even appear to show "dragging" or "claw raking" styles, adding to the evidence that different dinosaur species or individuals may have returned seasonally to display in their own unique ways.
No Footsteps Allowed—Even for Scientists
Dinosaur Ridge is protected, so scientists can't walk directly on the delicate rock surfaces. That's where the drone technology came in.
Aerial views provided detailed, non-invasive data that allowed researchers to study the scrapes' orientation, depth and patterns without physically stepping on them.
From this, the researchers were able to determine which way dinosaurs were facing when they left the traces in the ground.
A Prehistoric Social Scene
Researchers compared the Dinosaur Ridge findings with other known lekking sites in western Colorado and Alberta, Canada. All showed similar scrape patterns and behaviors.
The dense clustering of scrapes with no evidence of food or water nearby supports the idea that these sites were purely for social and mating purposes—what modern biologists call "classical leks."
Though no direct fossil evidence confirms female presence or actual mating, the arrangement and repetition of these displays over time strongly suggest that certain dinosaurs gathered in specific places—year after year—to compete for mates, much like some modern bird species.
Rewriting Dinosaur Behavior
Until recently, paleontologists debated whether these scrapes represented feeding, territorial marking or nesting attempts. But with new data from multiple layers of sediment and the sheer number of similar patterns across different sites, the "dinosaur dance floor" theory is gaining ground.
Ultimately, this discovery at Dinosaur Ridge doesn't just add to the fossil record—it offers a rare and intimate glimpse into the social and reproductive lives of dinosaurs, connecting their behavior to that of their closest living relatives: birds.
Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about dinosaurs? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.
Reference
Buntin, R. C. C., Moklestad, T., Matthews, N. A., Breithaupt, B., Murphey, P. C., Kapinos, I., & Noffke, N. (2025). A new theropod dinosaur lek in the Cretaceous Dakota Sandstone (Dinosaur Ridge, Colorado, USA). Cretaceous Research, 176. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cretres.2025.106176
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
National Geographic
4 hours ago
- National Geographic
A Swiss village was buried under a mountain. This town could be next.
In the past century, scientists have observed more rockfalls and avalanches in the Alps, a looming threat to nearby villages. In this aerial view, rubble and ice fill a portion of the Loetschental Valley following a landslide on June 3, 2025 in Blatten, Switzerland. Over 317 million cubic feet of rubble, mud, and ice fell on to Blatten on May 28. Photograph by Robert Hradil, Getty Images Last month, Lukas Kalbermatten-Ritler stood in a hamlet overlooking the small Swiss village of Blatten opposite the Birch Glacier, holding up his camera phone up in disbelief. 'It was like a bomb went off,' says Kalbermatten-Ritler, who's home and historic third-generation family-owned Hotel Edelweiss was destroyed on May 28. 'There were black rocks coming like a wall over the glacier, like it was a big hand taking the village. This was the moment I stopped filming. I didn't want to film when my village was falling.' It took 28 seconds for the landslide from the collapse of the glacier to cover 600-year-old wooden homes in one of Switzerland's oldest and most picturesque valley villages in hard brown, cold sandpaper sludge that will be sinking for years. The collapse was so powerful it registered as a 3.1 magnitude earthquake. It was a village that scientists never expected to see almost completely buried by 328 million cubic feet of falling rock and ice. Destroyed houses float in the water from the river Lonza that formed a lake beside the massive avalanche, triggered by the collapse of the Birch Glacier. Photograph by Michael Buholzer, Keystone/AP A house is submerged in water following a glacier collapse. Photograph by Michael Buholzer, Keystone/AP Yet there are others, like Kandersteg, a Swiss tourist town nine miles away that scientists watch anxiously. It sits in the shadow of an unstable cliffside called Spitze Stei could trigger a landslide with twice the ice and rock debris that flattened Blatten. Scientists say it should have fallen by now. 'We can't predict exactly when disasters like this will happen,' says Matthias Huss, senior glaciologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and director of the Swiss glacier monitoring network. Even with the best rockfall, landslide, and avalanche monitoring systems in the world, Alpine towns remain in uncertain danger. Magazine for all ages starting at $25/year In the worst-case scenario, over 700 million cubic feet of limestone and marl will come crashing down into Lake Oeschinen, itself a result of landslides 3,200 years ago. The splash would send a wave 2.5 miles into the center of Kandersteg, covering around 25 percent of the town, including hotels, homes, and the school. Other less-severe, likelier, models show smaller, still destructive debris flows surpassing safety dams built by the village, according to Nils Hahlen, head of the natural hazard division for the Office of Forest and Natural Hazards in the Swiss canton, or state, of Bern. The landslide that devastated the town of Blatten was unexpected. In other, nearby villages, scientists have identified unstable cliff faces that might trigger similar tides of rock, water, and debris in the future. Photograph by Michael Buholzer, Keystone/AP 'But mountain people are robust. They don't move out of their villages because of changing threats unless authorities decide it's too risky to stay,' says Markus Stoffel, a geomorphologist at the University of Geneva who grew up near Blatten and Kandersteg. Most of the town's 1,300 residents remain. On mountain watch Four hours into what was billed as a 'short' (eight-mile) hike, I rest on a mossy stump while my 75-year-old mountain guide smokes a pipe. Mountain guides don't eat much, Fritz Loretan tells me. He's also a man of few words (clocking it down the trail in loafer sneakers with no tread), and when he talks about the looming threat in Kandersteg, he explains: 'When you grow up in the mountains, then you are used to them, and you won't feel safe in other places.' In 2018, while paragliding over Spitze Stei, Loretan's friend saw 'a cut in the mountain,' and alerted authorities. Experts realized the outer rock section could fall at any moment. That was the year Spitze Stei became the most watched rock in Switzerland via high-tech drones, radar surveys, GPS, and cameras. 'At Spitze Stei the main water sources are snowmelt and rain. The exact amount of water in the mountain is one of the unknown factors,' says Hahlen. Since Earth's last ice age, rockfaces have been routinely dislodged from Alpine peaks as a result of natural movement. But in the past century, scientists have seen more rockfalls and avalanches. Glaciers and permafrost—the high-altitude frozen soil, rock, and sediment that acts like glue to hold the mountains together—are melting as a result of the warming temperatures caused by greenhouse gas emissions. A view of a landslide in Brienz, three days apart, from November of last year. As the region warms, ice and frozen soil are melting and unsticking the glue that once held parts of the mountain together. Photograph by Gian Ehrenzeller, Keystone/AP (Top) (Left) and Photograph by Gian Ehrenzeller, Keystone/AP (Bottom) (Right) As this icy glue melts, it allows water to penetrate cracks in the mountain, build pressure, and eventually rupture, triggering more frequent and severe landslides, rockslides, rockfalls, and avalanches, especially after intense rain and snow, another hazard of warming temperatures. 'In the next few years and decades, we expect an increase in risk from permafrost rock,' says Felix Pfluger, chair of landslide research at the Technical University of Munich. While catastrophic rock and snow fall can go virtually unnoticed in the remote regions of Alaska, Siberia, or northern Canada, they're an existential threat to many Alpine communities. The landslide that covered Blatten isn't the first tragedy in the Alps from a rockfall. This past June, residents of the Swiss village of Brienz/Brinzauls evacuated for the fourth time in two years from a rockslide threat (after debris stopped just shy of the village in 2023). Eight hikers and ten homes in the valley of Bondo didn't survive a devastating landslide in 2017. Stoffel says he expects more chain-reaction disasters with bigger consequences in the Alps—rock avalanches overloading glacier ice and causing it to liquify and slide down the slope, like in Blatten. His research shows 'a clear tendency for such [catastrophic chain-reaction] events to become more frequent in a warming world,' he says. '...especially after heavy rain.' A view of Kandersteg, Switzerland in October, 2023. While the region is being closely monitored, it remains safe. Photograph by Noemie Vieillard, Hans Lucas/Redux 'If you ask the older people in the village, they'll tell you there was always falling debris,' says Kandersteg's Mayor Maeder René-François. Growing up in Kandersteg, he remembers poking a pole into the cracks between ice and snow to search for bodies after an avalanche took out half a hotel in high season. There's a long history of rockfall and landslides, he says, as recent as 2023 and even this past May five died here in an avalanche. 'With climate change, it's happening faster. It rains harder, the days are hotter, and the fog sets in thicker over the mountain,' he says. 'But people here are not scared, it's life in the mountains. They respect that they must act in the correct way and follow the evacuation plan.' Since 2021, Kandersteg has enforced a ban on all new construction to minimize potential damage in the village district, closed a section of town, and built dams to reroute lake water. 'Big disasters normally start smaller. Instabilities with rock fall over a certain time start with cracks opening. A mountain doesn't just disappear out of the blue. There are always precursor signs,' says Stoffel. 'And if you take them seriously and observe the changes continuously, then, then you may not be able to protect the buildings or the village, but you can save lives.' While no one knows exactly when or what section of Spitze Stei will start sliding down the mountain, when it starts to crumble, residents and tourists should have at least 24 to 48 hours to evacuate. On a warm mid-June day, I followed tourists with hiking packs and poles to a mountain chalet built in 1880 and pulled up a lunch chair under an apple-red umbrella that matched a nearby Swiss flag and took in the brilliant turquoise of Lake Oeschinen–glistening and undisturbed by falling rocks, for now. Swimmers and paddlers snap selfies; a bride and groom pose by cows grazing near a roped-off section of the beach—their bells clanging measure with the chirping birds. 'None of them know they're right under it,' my server, David Brunoldi, told me when I asked him which rock is Spitze Stei. He points to the 9,800-foot frosty peak above us. 'More rocks are coming down every day.' Brunoldi says mountain people stay in Kandersteg for generations because it's home. On this picture-perfect, rugged Alpine terrain, where rockfall has always been a risk, his grandfather worked and died on a mountain train. Last year alone, an increasing 2.8 million cubic feet of rock crumbled down into the lake. 'No need to worry though, Brunoldi adds. 'It's not falling today.'
Newsweek
9 hours ago
- Newsweek
Christopher Nolan Came Close to Directing James Bond
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Entertainment gossip and news from Newsweek's network of contributors Now that we know Denis Villeneuve of "Dune" fame will be directing the next "James Bond" film, Variety reports that "Oppenheimer" director Christopher Nolan came closer than we thought to helming a film in the franchise. Read More: 'Lilo & Stitch 2' Already On the Way from Disney Variety says initially Amazon was "very interested" in recruiting Nolan to helm the long-awaited follow-up to "No Time to Die", even if that meant giving Nolan the final cut (something "James Bond" directors have historically been denied). Christopher Nolan attends the 77th Annual Directors Guild of America Awards held at The Beverly Hilton on February 8, 2025 in Beverly Hills, California. Christopher Nolan attends the 77th Annual Directors Guild of America Awards held at The Beverly Hilton on February 8, 2025 in Beverly Hills, California. JB Lacroix/FilmMagic As recounted by RadioTimes back in March, this isn't Christopher Nolan's first near-miss with the "Bond" franchise. The filmmaker pitched a "Bond" film after making "Tenet". His vision took the story back to the 1960s and would've been the first of a two-parter. Things reportedly broke down between Nolan and Barbara Broccoli when the latter wouldn't compromise on giving Nolan the final cut. Right now, Nolan is busy making "The Odyssey", which stars Tom Holland who is apparently on the shortlist to become the next James Bond. Variety reports the "Spider-Man" star is joined on that list by Jacob Elordi ("Saltburn") and Harris Dickinson ("Babygirl"). While Christopher Nolan ultimately won't be directing the next "Bond" film, his brother Jonathan Nolan was reportedly one of the directors beat out of the final running by Villeneuve. Variety reports the other directors up for the job were Edward Berger ("Conclave"), Edgar Wright ("Baby Driver"), and Paul King ("Wonka"). It's worth mentioning that while Villeneuve is locked in for "Bond 26", there's no telling who might follow for "Bond 27" and beyond. Villeneuve doesn't have final cut and he's only signed on for a single film. Variety recounts that the last time a director helmed two "Bond" films in a row was Sam Mandes who directed both 2012's "Skyfall" and 2015's "Spectre." Alfonso Cuarón ("Gravity") is another filmmaker who was, for a time, a favorite to helm the next "Bond" film, but he took himself out of the running by focusing on other projects, including "Jane" which will star Charlize Theron. There's no word yet on who will write "Bond 26". Some early speculation tapped Jonathan Nolan for the job, but Variety reports that he isn't available to write. More Movies: 'F1' Director Teases 'Top Gun 3' Arnold Schwarzenegger Chooses the Worst 'Terminator' Movie
Newsweek
12 hours ago
- Newsweek
Golden Fiber Worn by Emperors Resurrected After 2,000 Years
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. One of the most prized materials of antiquity—the luxurious "golden fiber of the sea" that was reserved for the likes of Roman emperors—has been resurrected after 2,000 years. Often proposed as the inspiration for the "Golden Fleece" of Greek myth, sea silk is made from the "byssus" threads secreted by the pen shell Pinna nobilis, a large species of clam that is native to the Mediterranean, to anchor it to rocks on the seafloor. Sea silk was valued for being lightweight, warm and finer than regular silk, but also for its iridescent, golden color that wouldn't fade. A sample of the new sea silk. A sample of the new sea silk. POSTECH Ecological decline, overfishing and marine pollution, however, have driven P. nobilis into endangered status, with harvesting of the clam has been banned and the art of spinning byssus thread now limited to but a few individuals. Now, however, professor Dong Soo Hwang of South Korea's Pohang University of Science and Technology and colleagues have spun sea silk from the "waste" byproduct of a commercially farmed shellfish—and revealed the secret of its lasting color. In their study, Hwang and colleagues focused on another "pen shell" species, Atrina pectinata, which is cultivated off of the coast of Korea for food. Just like its endangered cousin P. nobilis, A. pectinata secretes byssus threads to anchor itself to the sea floor. The researchers determined that these threads are both chemically and physically similar to those produced by P. nobilis—and, moreover, can be processed to recreate golden sea silk. Analysis of this material has revealed what gives sea silk its distinctive golden hue and why the color is so resistant to fading over time. Rather than being the result of some form of dye, the golden sheen of sea silk is inherent, a form of "structural coloration" derived from the way light reflects off its nanostructures. The same phenomenon can also be seen at play in the iridescent surfaces or soap bubbles and on butterfly wings. Pictured: a pen shell, both closed (left) and open (right), showing the byssus from which the material for the sea silk is taken. Pictured: a pen shell, both closed (left) and open (right), showing the byssus from which the material for the sea silk is taken. POSTECH In the case of sea silk, the structural coloration come from the layering of a spherical protein called photonin—one that becomes more vivid the more orderly the protein arrangement. The result is a coloring that is highly stable. "Structurally colored textiles are inherently resistant to fading," said Hwang in a statement. "Our technology enables long-lasting color without the use of dyes or metals, opening new possibilities for sustainable fashion and advanced materials." Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about sea silk? Let us know via science@ Reference Choi, J., Im, J.-H., Kim, Y.-K., Shin, T. J., Flammang, P., Yi, G.-R., Pine, D. J., & Hwang, D. S. (2025). Structurally Colored Sustainable Sea Silk from Atrina pectinata. Advanced Materials.
