Some dinosaurs may have engaged in courtship rituals similar to ostriches and other birds, a finding that could shed light on the poorly understood mating behavior of these giants.
Source: Dinosaurs may have done bird-like dances to attract mates
Williamson said that it is suspected that dinosaurs must have had “a rich repertoire of behaviors related to mating and/or territoriality” based on the “elaborate skull ornamentation, colored plumage, and other structures that many dinosaurs have.”
And if you haven’t watched the birds of paradise recently watch them again :-)
Birds of Paradise
Even the announcer in the YouTube video above says that the New Guinea birds of paradise are “unique and evolved nowhere else.” “One of the singular events of evolution that is so unique” Laughing, maybe that is an inside the box way of looking at it. Maybe many dinosaurs and early birds were like the birds of paradise today. They had evolved for millions and millions of years with feathers. Certainly that would be enough time to modify a color or two. But it’s not just the colors and the fantastic exaggeration of some of the feathers. It’s the dance patterns, the tapping, the vocalisations that are fascinating to me and that I imagine evolving with the dinosaurs. Call me crazy :-) this is also what I refer to as the neurological evolution that is required before a jump in physical structure. The neurological evolution is never fossilized and leads to the pauses in evolution.
And it is just possible that the reason that the birds of paradise are now only found in a small area of New Guinea is _not_ that they could only evolve there but that the competition to survive after the asteroid impact wiped out that behavior everywhere else as too expensive.
I so want someone to paint me a picture of a triceratops covered with beautiful iridescent feathers with even more elaborate feathers around the frill of its head, and — Dancing!
I have no money to pay for it though. Oh well.