 do read further, then.
The original tunnel was just wide enough to admit the adult, a tight fit that also shows up in burrows made by a lot of modern burrowing critters, like armadillos and coyotes. Before we started digging, I also predicted that the big burrow should have smaller burrows coming off the main tunnel made by other animals that lived in the same burrow, such as insects and mammals. (This sort of interspecies cohabitation is probably illegal in most of Georgia and all of Alabama. Except if the animals are kinfolk, of course.) Nevertheless, it is very common in modern gopher tortoise burrows, which can have as many as 300 species of animals sharing any given burrow with a tortoise.
Sure enough, we found a cluster of small, pencil-like burrows on the upper corner of the big burrow, and a larger, banana-sized burrow on the lower corner. These additional bits of evidence made it even more likely that what we were looking at was the former home for the dinosaur and other critters that found this underground haven a safe, stable place to hang out.
The evidence got better once the specimen was prepared at the Museum of the Rockies. The dinosaur clearly showed anatomical traits suited for digging. Need more evidence? The adult dinosaur had two partially grown offspring of the same species in the burrow with it. This dinosaur was not only a digger, but a denner that took care of its young. It also demonstrated that this dinosaur might have faced the same problem as modern human parents, such as getting their kids out of the house.
Starting in the first half of 2006, Dave, Yoshi, and I wrote a paper that summarized our results and sent it in for peer review. But we were then surprised to experience several rejections. (I won’t say which journals rejected it, but will just say how that’s the nature of science). With a little more persistence, we finally did get it through peer review and into print in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, B in March 2007. The publication of the paper garnered a little bit of media attention, although it was understandably buried under the far more important bit of news that Britney Spears was coming out of rehab (again).
Nonetheless, the news stories were nice for public education about the paper. The paper also led to our eventually winning an award for Best Paleontology Paper in 2007 from a Spanish foundation, Fundación Conjunto Paleontológico de Teruel-Dinópolis. Best of all, it inspired a very cool work of art, done by Georgia visionary artist, Ruth Truth (aka, Ruth Schowalter).
Mother Earth, Mother Dinosaur (2007), by Ruth Truth, and photographed by Ty Butler. (Full disclosure: I have slept with this artist, while also being married to her. Yes, I know: how retro.)
Art and science combined then, as this artwork graced the cover of a public-outreach book we wrote for and published through the Fundación Conjunto Paleontológico de Teruel-Dinópolis, titled El Dinosaurio que Excavó su Madriguera [The Dinosaur that Dug Its Burrow]. This book was translated into Spanish from our American English, and was aimed at Spanish teenagers to interest them in science.
The cover of El Dinosaurio que Excavó su Madriguera [The Dinosaur that Dug Its Burrow], published through the Fundación Conjunto Paleontológico de Teruel-Dinópolis in December 2009.
So what does any of this have to do with Australia and dinosaurs there? Ah, that is the subject of Dinosaurs Down Underground: Part III. (And not to worry, it will be nothing like Rocky III, Rambo III, and especially Crocodile Dundee III.) Next stop, Knowledge Creek, Victoria!