An ancient bone bed in a remote Mongolian desert presents tantalizing clues that dinosaurs of a feather may have flocked together for the same reasons modern birds do.

“We’re starting to realize how much birds have inherited from their dinosaur ancestors,” said Gregory Funston, a paleontologist at the University of Alberta and lead author of a paper published Monday in the journal Nature.

Funston and his co-authors have drawn their conclusions from an extensive bone bed of Avimimus fossils discovered a decade ago. The bed is likely to contain the remains of dozens of individuals of the feathered, warm-blooded, beaked dinosaur.

The site, a two-day drive from the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar where everything researchers need to live and work had to be trucked in, still has much to teach. Funston said only about 12 square metres of a 100-square-metre dig have been excavated.

Further research on the bones could be productive as well. If it turns out males are prevalent, that suggests the fossil bed could be a former site for mating behaviour.

Scientists have long known that some dinosaurs lived together in groups but the Avimimus deposit is unique for two reasons.

The first is that remains from this type of dinosaur have only been found in a group fewer than six times anywhere in the world.

The second reason is even more interesting. Normal flocks would include both adults and juveniles, but almost all the individuals found in the Mongolian bone bed were adults.