They Needed Fresh Air

BERKELEY – The peculiar pose of many fossilized dinosaurs, with wide-open mouth, head thrown back and recurved tail, likely resulted from the agonized death throes typical of brain damage and asphyxiation, according to two paleontologists.

A classic example of the posture, which has puzzled paleontologists for ages, is the 150 million-year-old Archaeopteryx, the first-known example of a feathered dinosaur and the proposed link between dinosaurs and present-day birds.

An ostrich-like dinosaur, Struthiomimus; in the classic posture indicative of brain damage and asphyxiation at death.
Drawn from specimen at American Museum of Natural History. The skull is about a foot long.

Agonized pose tells of dinosaur death throes