New research says dinosaur males were not exactly the macho-ferocious cruel beasts we thought them to be; in fact, they were actually pretty good at taking care of their kids. The study is based on the fossilized remains of three such fatherly figures which were actually sitting on nests. Even if the eggs seemed to come from different mothers, such a thing would not be abnormal in the case of theropods or meat-eating dinos.

According to Fox News, researcher Jason Moore from the Texas A&M University said that the reason for this behavioral pattern was that the dinosaur mother needed a lot of energy to make large eggs in great quantities. So she would need a constant supply of meaty snacks, but couldn’t have gotten them if she were to stay all day cooped up on the nest minding the children.

This study is yet another proof that non-dinosaurs actually did have features we now see in today’s birds. It can be no mere coincidence that in about 90 percent of non-extinct bird species the male plays an important role in the upbringing of the young.  
 
Oviraptor philoceratops, Troodon formosus and Citipati osmolskae – these are the three species of maniraptors (a sub-class of theropods) which were subject to the researcher’s minute observations. Incidentally, it is believed that maniraptors turned into more or less fully-fledged birds 150 million years ago, when the evolutionary clock was set on Jurassic Time.

Even if Moore declares himself satisfied with the evidence found, he admits that it’s still not enough for making a rock-solid case in favor of the parental care theory. “The difficulty is that we have so few specimens,” he says. “To do a study like this and be absolutely conclusive we'd like to have 30 or 50 or 100 specimens, but the fossil record isn't like that.”