"A Baby Protecting Other Babies" — TikTok Rediscovers "Babysitter Dinosaur" From 2014
The remains of a juvenile dinosaur has one TikTokker very emotional.
Published March 20 2025, 2:22 p.m. ET
When was the last time you had a good cry? For TikTok content creator cr33pwave, a "hormonal" cry was had over a decade-old report of a dinosaur fossil discovery which indicated a young dinosaur protected others in a babysitting manner. Indeed, the dinosaur bone remains appeared to show a juvenile dinosaur acting as a caregiver for even younger nestlings.
If only scientists could bring back the Psittacosaurus.
Whether or not you've read the actual scientific report — or seen the emotional TikTok video describing the fascinating discovery — you'll definitely want to read this. If for no other reason than morbid curiosity, you may just learn a thing or two about the social interactions between one genus of dinosaur 120 million years ago.
Paleontologists discovered a "babysitter" dinosaur.
According to Live Science, in September 2014, researchers in China discovered the 120 million-year-old skeletal remains of 24 baby Psittacosauruses at a nesting site within the Lujiatun beds of the Yixian Formation in China's Liaoning province.
What made this particular discovery extra special, though, was the additional discovery of a comparatively older dinosaur fossil, affectionately considered the caregiver, or "babysitter" of the group of nestlings.
"In my opinion, this fossil is one of the most beautiful dinosaur fossils known," University of Pennsylvania vertebrate paleontologist and lead study author Brandon Hedrick said at the time, per Live Science. "It is definitely one of the most important sites in dinosaur paleontology on Earth and is certainly the most productive area found in the past 20 years."
Hedrick — at the time a doctoral student — told phys.org that the dinosaurs were probably trapped beneath a slurry of materials as a result of a volcanic eruption.
The babysitter of the group was estimated to be 4 or 5 years old, per the source. Based on prior research that indicated this genus of dinosaur doesn't mate until age eight or nine, the researchers believed that the older dinosaur served more of a babysitter role than being the actual parent of the group of hatchlings.
Indeed, while the researchers weren't able to definitively label the findings a "nest" due to rigorous naming criteria, the discovery did have other important implications. Extrapolated, the findings hint at pro-social behavior among Psittacosauruses, with these remains perhaps indicating an older sibling cared for their baby brothers and sisters before the natural disaster.
A TikTokker became emotional over the babysitter dinosaur.
Confessing in the captions that she could never be a paleontologist, user cr33pwave begins her video indicating that she is hormonal, hence the ensuing tears as she muses on the decade-old findings.
"I remembered the little juvenile dinosaur — the Psittacosaurus — who was found dead next to a bunch of little baby ones because—" she begins before becoming too emotional to speak at the 16-17-second mark. "It was tasked with being their babysitter."
The prospect of being so young and tasked with protecting baby dinosaurs became too much to handle for her, before mentioning that, "It was a baby protecting other babies," she explained, referring to the 4- or 5-year-old Psittacosaurus watching over the 24 hatchlings.
"He was just a little dinosaur trying to protect the babies, he didn't know," she said, before clarifying that the 25 Psittacosaurus likely died beneath a mudslide.