ON THE DISCOVERY OF AN OVIRAPTORID SKELETON ON A NEST OF EGGS AT BAYAN-MANDAHU, INNER-MONGOLIA, PEOPLES-REPUBLIC-OF-CHINA

A partial skeleton of Oviraptor (which means egg thief), collected at Bayan Mandahu (Inner Mongolia, People's Republic of China) in 1990 was lying on top of a nest of eggs. Of the six known skeletons of this ge nus from Upper Cretaceous Djadokhtan sediments, this is the second occ urrence in which the theropods were interacting with the eggs when the y were buried by sand and dust during sandstorms. Two explanations for the association of Oviraptor with eggs are that the theropod may have been eating the eggs, or it may have been incubating and protecting t hem. Evidence presented suggests that the latter hypothesis is more li kely. It is also conceivable that the female oviraptorid was in the pr ocess of laying eggs when she died.