Valen-Dinos 2015

In the spirit of Valentine's Day, a collection of speculative mating behaviors in various dinosaur species.

Top Left: Deinocheirus. Since the discovery of a therizinosaur nesting site seemed to refute my previous idea of bower-building therizinosaurs, I ended up transferring this behavior to Deinocheirus, which also has very powerful arms that could pull branches together to form arches for a nest. Again, the nest would be decorated with colorful objects to attract females. Additionally, with the idea of Deinocheirus’s tall spines supporting a fatty hump to help it through harsh times, I have this male showing it off in part of his courtship display to show his fitness. The bigger the hump, the healthier he is, the more attracted the female will be.

Bottom Left: An Einiosaurus pair showing affection by hooking their nose horns together. The idea was inspired by the way modern elephants intertwine their trunks together for the same reasons. A  little idea to spice things besides just the typical showcase of frills and horns that others often think of in ceratopsid courtship behavior.

Top Right: A male Kentrosaurus mounting a female in a (not-so conventional manner). As many dinosaur enthusiasts may know or can infer, the back spikes and plates of stegosaurs make more conventional mounting difficult. Another thought I had about stegosaurus with shoulder spikes was that a male might accidentally stab himself on a female’s shoulder spike if he slips or dismounts improperly. So I came up with an idea of stegosaurian “safe sex” – literally safe! The female Kentrosaurus lies down and leans to one side, exposing her cloaca and part of her belly to the male. She slightly curls her body in, pushing her shoulder spike closely to her side so that it doesn’t point out as much. The male then approaches the female perpendicularly and mounts her, curling his front half diagonally in the opposite direction of the female so as not to go against the direction of her spikes and injure himself. After copulation is complete, the male Kentrosaurus carefully dismounts by turning to face the opposite direction of the female, moving along the direction of her spikes rather than against them.

Bottom Right: A male Allosaurus displays to a female by opening and closing his jaws while head-bobbing. I got this idea from the fact that Allosaurus can open its mouth extremely wide and uses its skull and upper jaw like a hatchet to bite prey. In Allosaurus, this display of head-bobbing would showcase the strength of its neck muscles responsible for its hatchet-like biting method. The greater the swing, the stronger the neck, the more powerful the bite, the more fit the Allosaurus is. Meanwhile, mouth-gaping is another show of fitness - the wider the gape, the more fit the male is.