Dancing Dinosaurs Twisted and Turned to Attract Mates

An artist's depiction of what dinosaur mating dances may have looked like. Image credit: Xing Lida and Yujiang Han How did dinosaurs find and attract mates? They went to the prehistoric club. Paleontologists from the University of Colorado Denver discovered a “dinosaur dance floor” in Colorado, where they say ancient theropods scraped deep furrows into the earth as they twisted, turned and kicked in an effort to impress females. The scrape marks were found in the Dakota Sandstone, a layer of sediment laid down around 100 million years ago in the Midwest and West during the Cretaceous period. The researchers believe that some of the marks represent evidence of mating rituals among a species of dinosaur called Acrocanthosaurus, a large, predatory species of bipedal theropod that could grow up to 38 feet long and weigh as much as 6.8 tons.