Feathered dinos that walked on two legs and had parrot-like beaks, shared another characteristic with modern birds -- they brooded clutches of eggs at a temperature similar to chickens, a study showed on June 28, 2017.
Ostrich-sized oviraptors, ancestor of birds, sat on their eggs to incubate them at between 35-40 degrees Celsius (95-104 degrees Fahrenheit) -- within the range of 37.5 Celsius for hens today, researchers reported in the journal Palaeontology.
A team from China and France isolated oxygen isotopes from the shells and embryo bones of seven oviraptor eggs from the Upper Cretaceous period some 100-66 million years ago.
