Comments on: Fossil Find: A Doomed Pterosaur Mom and Her Never-Hatched Egg http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/01/20/fossil-find-a-doomed-pterosaur-mom-and-her-never-hatched-egg/ Mon, 22 Apr 2013 21:34:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.2 By: Eliza Strickland http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/01/20/fossil-find-a-doomed-pterosaur-mom-and-her-never-hatched-egg/#comment-24781 Eliza Strickland Fri, 21 Jan 2011 18:22:02 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/?p=25215#comment-24781 Thanks for your insights, Paolo! We love it when experts chime in. -- Eliza, DISCOVER online news editor Thanks for your insights, Paolo! We love it when experts chime in.

– Eliza, DISCOVER online news editor

]]> By: PaoloV http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/01/20/fossil-find-a-doomed-pterosaur-mom-and-her-never-hatched-egg/#comment-24780 PaoloV Fri, 21 Jan 2011 11:54:40 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/?p=25215#comment-24780 Excellent stuff. I'm not surprised that Kevin Padian disagrees, he and Dave Unwin seldom see eye-to-eye, but that's part of the process. To be fair to Dave though, Kevin's comment about reptiles laying dozens of eggs at a time is plain silly - we had a question about <a href="http://www.askabiologist.org.uk/answers/viewtopic.php?id=5386" rel="nofollow">squamate brood sizes on AAB recently</a> and there are several species of lizard that only lay single eggs and gliding lizards like <i>Draco volans</i> only have small brood sizes, probably to keep their weight down. By the same token, Dave Unwin's idea about the single egg being buried strikes me as nonsensical. Small brood size and high levels of egg provisioning (=few large eggs) indicates high investment in few offspring, which usually means brooding and ongoing parental care. Excellent stuff. I’m not surprised that Kevin Padian disagrees, he and Dave Unwin seldom see eye-to-eye, but that’s part of the process. To be fair to Dave though, Kevin’s comment about reptiles laying dozens of eggs at a time is plain silly – we had a question about squamate brood sizes on AAB recently and there are several species of lizard that only lay single eggs and gliding lizards like Draco volans only have small brood sizes, probably to keep their weight down.

By the same token, Dave Unwin’s idea about the single egg being buried strikes me as nonsensical. Small brood size and high levels of egg provisioning (=few large eggs) indicates high investment in few offspring, which usually means brooding and ongoing parental care.

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