Who would have thought that humans weren't the only ones to have babysitters?

Paleontologists found a dinosaur "babysitter" in a rock slab with 24 young dinosaurs it seemed to be watching over.

They found the 120 million-year-old fossils in the Lujiatan beds in the Yixian Formation at Liaoning Province, in northeastern China.

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Brandon P. Hedrick from the University of Pennsylvania said that when he saw the photo of the dinosaurs, he wanted to have an in-depth exploration of it.

Their findings showed that the rock where the fossils were preserved were composed of volcanic materials.

Researchers believe that the dinosaurs' death likely came from lahar - a flood of volcanic debris - because there was no evidence of heat damage to the bones.

Lahar is a mixture of slurry pyroclastic material, rocky debris and water that is commonly associated with heavy rains after a volcanic eruption.

They explained that the younger dinosaurs appeared to be similar in size and were already hatched by the time of their death

Hedrick said the fossils have well-developed bone ends indicating they were capable of moving around.

They said the dinosaur babysitter was firmly embedded in the same layer of rock as the young dinosaurs.

Researchers noticed that two of the young dinosaurs were intertwined with the skulls which showed that the babysitter was closely associated to them.

The babysitter's skull was about 4.5 inches long, which indicated that the dinosaur was around 4 to 5 years old, researchers said.

The dinosaur babysitter was a Psittacosaurus Lujiatunensis that could not reproduce until they were 8 years old, so it could not be the parent, but more probably an older brother or sister that was helping take care of its siblings, researchers believe.

The American researchers collaborated with Dalian Museum of Natural History in China where the specimen are on display. The findings appear on the journal Cretaceous Research.

TagsPaleontology, Fossils, Science