Psittacosaur plate

[AranHao]

Hello, 

I have recently completed the preparation work for a Psittacosaur plate. This is a plate with three juvenile Psittacosaur closely adjacent to each other. 

 

May I know if they were buried in their original positions after death or if they were washed away by floods and buried together? 

And, what species they are?

Thank you for any input.

 

[Ludwigia]

Sorry I can't answer any of your questions, but I just wanted to say that I'm impressed with your prep work. You would probably need to research the local paleoenvironment at the time of burial.

[AranHao]

21 hours ago, Ludwigia said:

Sorry I can't answer any of your questions, but I just wanted to say that I'm impressed with your prep work. You would probably need to research the local paleoenvironment at the time of burial.

Thank you, this is a great encouragement for me. Although the hunter had already done a lot of cleaning work before I received it. This is difficult for me as a novice, I only have a surgical knife to do this job.

 

The plate I just received.

[TriVeratops]

Beautiful fossil. Re: your question, it seems more likely that the animals were buried in their death positions. From what i’ve read, carcasses that are transported to their final resting place via rivers, etc., are usually found as jumbles of disarticulated bones rather than articulated skeletons.

[Randyw]

Actually being articulated just means they were buried before the carcasses rotted. 
there are several examples of animals being killed in floods where there are several articulated skeletons together. Remember the famous ankylosaur “mummy” was preserved whole becuase it was washed into the water and sank and was rapidly buried. You’ll have to confirm by other means whether they were buried in location or the bodies were washed there in a flood. From what i understand signs of animals killed in a flood are premortem broken bones, jumbled body positions etc…. If valcanic eruption leaves signs like ash etc in the rock, buried in sand leaves the bodies in a more natural position etc etc its all in the clues…

im noticing in your piece there are a number of longbone breaks if any of those show signs of being broken just before or at the time of death that could be a clue. Also the body positions are all unnatural wich could be another clue. I can’t tell if there’s any signs of scavenging but if there aren’t that’s another sign they were rapidly buried wich could point to flood, drowning in a river crossing and being buried in sediment, mudslide etc… check the surrounding matrix for your clues. It may tell you… articulated skeletons generally point to either rapid burial or oxygen poor environments where predators and rot don’t disturb the carcass… 

As this is all conjecture from looking at a picture I could be completly wrong too! LOL!

Edited September 12 by Randyw

[AranHao]

3 hours ago, Randyw said:

im noticing in your piece there are a number of longbone breaks if any of those show signs of being broken just before or at the time of death that could be a clue.

Sorry, part of the fracture of the long bone was caused by me because the bone is quite brittle. When I carefully remove the sediment with a surgical knife, the bone is prone to fracture and I need to use glue to bond it together.

Finally, I applied Paraloid B72(10:100) to reinforce the entire fossil.

[AranHao]

Thank you for everyone's input. 

I completely agree that they were buried before rotting. 

When I looked at it again, there were three juvenile psittacosaurs on this plate. The two on the right in the picture were dismembered before burial, and only the first one on the left has a complete skeleton. So my guess is that the scavenger encountered a mudslide while feeding on the two psittacosaurs on the right, and luckily escaped. 

In the end, these three psittacosaurs were buried there forever.

[AranHao]

Can someone answer my question? When a whole skeleton is buried underground, its bones will change position due to the movement of tectonic plates?