Egg burier animals question

crocodilians would be the obvious and most pertinent example. aside from birds, crocodiles are the only currently thriving branch of archosaurs. they also bury their eggs. they do this because they're not endotherms. egg mounds serve to incubate the eggs. temperature also control gender.we know that some dinosaurs appear to have done something very similar, though they seem to have generally covered their eggs with their own warm-blooded bodies. basically, egg-burying birds are sort of a throw-back, retaining crocodilian habits.Edited by arachnophilia, : word choice

---

you have completely misunderstood evolution. it is not survival of only the most fit, but survival of everything that except the least fit. a small survival advantage is, frankly, enough for the retention of a feature. no net effect is enough for the retention of a feature. and if there is some small advantage, that does not mean that EVERY similar animal would likewise spontaneously evolve a covergent feature or become extinct.in any case, this is not what people are arguing. if you'll notice above, my argument is that it's a throwback to crocodilian practices. but such behaviour is the norm for other branches of archosauria.

---

that they are terrestrial (as opposed to arboreal) is probably important. yes. i wasn't sure if that was the case in mound-building birds, but vaguely recalled that it might have been, as in crocodiles.

---

crocodilians and basal archosaurs seem to have buried their eggs, and used tempurature to control gender. i'm not too clear on early dinosaurs, though the transition from cold-blooded to warm-blooded seems to have occured prior to dinosaurs' divergence, within crocodilians like postosuchus.dinosaurs as a whole seem to have continued using egg-mounds, though in various different styles. i seem to recall that both ornithischians and saurischians tended their eggs in open nests, but that sauropods (unlike other saurischians) buried them due to the impracticality of sitting on them.in other words, in this particular evolutionary tree, egg-burying came and went a few times (much like flight). tempurature's relation to gender might be common to the whole lineage, and egg burying may simply be a common solution for controlling temperature.Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.

---