Tag: eggs
-
Recent fossil discovery suggests the first dinosaur egg was leathery
Comparison of fossil eggs (c) with existing soft-shelled, leathery, and hard-shelled eggs . Credit: IVPP Phys.org has a story about dinosaur eggs. A paper in the journal National Science Review suggests that the first dinosaur eggs were leathery not hard as we see in modern day birds. The study looked at three skeletons from adult…
-
Ancient platypus-like fossil could rewrite the history of egg-laying mammals
LiveScience has a story about an platypus-like animal from… South America. Patagorhynchus pascuali lived about 70 million years ago in what is now Argentina. It’s was a monotreme, which is an egg laying mammal like Australia’s platypus. This fossil represents the oldest evidence of egg laying mammals ever found in South America. This fossil was…
-
Fossil Friday #114: Basket of Mazon Eggs
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #114. Expect this to be a somewhat regular feature of the website. We will post any fossil pictures you send in to esconi.info@gmail.com. Please include a short description or story. Check the #FossilFriday Twitter hash tag for contributions from around the world! For this week, we have some exciting…
-
Thick-shelled turtle egg with embryo still inside from the Cretaceous period found in China
Phys.org has a story about the discovery of a turtle embryo in a fossilized egg. The fossil egg was found in China’s Henan Province and dates to the Cretaceous Period. The egg was described in a paper in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in…
-
Trilobite Tuesday #31: Sexual Dimorphism / Trilobite Eggs
For many types of animals, there are differences between males and females, sometimes it’s size, sometimes color, and sometimes structure – either or both soft and hard body structures. Unfortunately, color and soft-body structures aren’t usually preserved and even when it’s preserved it doesn’t leave enough information in the fossil record. For size and hard…
-
First Soft-Shelled Dinosaur Egg Fossils Found
Smithsonian Magazine has a story about dinosaur eggs. Nature had two articles that found evidence that dinosaur eggs were soft-shelled. The first study found evidence of soft-shelled eggs by analyzing fossilized Protoceratops and Mussaurus egg shells. The evidence suggests eggs similar to those of turtles. The second paper identified an enigmatic fossil, commonly referred to…
-
Trilobite Tuesday #5: Are These Trilobite Eggs?
Scientific American’s “The Artful Amoeba” had a piece about trilobite eggs a few years ago. It seems that Markus Martin, an amateur paleontologist, discovered gold, or more specifically trilobite gold. Atlas Obscura has the more personal details of this fossil find. It what was once known as Beecher’s Bed, Martin found and then prepared some…
-
PBS Eons: How the Egg Came First
There’s a new episode of PBS Eons. This one is about eggs, the platypus, and of course birds! They tackle the endless question “What came first the Chicken or the egg?”. The story of the egg spans millions of years, from the first vertebrates that dared to venture onto land to today’s mammals, including…
-
PBS Eons: The Case of the Dinosaur Egg Thief
There’s a new PBS Eons episode. This one’s about Oviraptor. The would be “Egg Thief” is now a caring mother… Paleontologists found a small theropod dinosaur skull right on top of a nest of eggs that were believed to belong to a plant-eating dinosaur. Instead of being the nest robbers that they were originally…
-
Scientific American: Ancient Mongolian Nests Show Dinosaurs Protected Their Eggs
Scientific American has an article about fossil dinosaur eggs. A new find, which consisted of about 15 nests and more than 50 eggs, was found in what is now the Gobi Desert. It dates to the late Cretaceous, about 80 million years ago and shows evidence of gregarious behavior. All the details appeared in a…
-
Unlaid egg discovered in ancient bird fossil
BARBARA MARRS ScienceMag has a post about the discovery of a fossil bird with an unlaid egg. The original paper appeared in the journal Nature Communications. For the first time, researchers have found an unlaid egg inside a fossilized bird. The find—belonging to a sparrow-size flyer that lived in northwestern China 110 million years ago—is…
-
Why Do Birds Have Colorful Eggs? Because They’re Dinosaurs
Gizmodo has an article about bird eggs. Why are they colorful? Well, dinosaurs had colorful eggs and birds are dinosaurs, therefore, birds also have colorful eggs. A recent study in Nature proposes that colorful dinosaur eggs had a single evolutionary origin. Birds are the only living amniotes with coloured eggs, which have long been considered…
-
NY Times: Hundreds of Fossilized Pterosaur Eggs Uncovered in China
The New York Times’ Trilobite blog has a story about the discovery of a more than 200 fossilized Pterosaur eggs. The species of pterosaur is known as Hamitpterus tianshanensis and it lived in the early Cretaceous period in what is now north western China. Xiaolin Wang discovered the eggs in a 120 million year old…
-
NatGeo: Why Pterosaurs Were the Weirdest Wonders on Wings
National Geographic Magazine has a interesting story in their November 2017 issue. Large and small pterosaurs are some of the strangest animals to ever live. They went extinct 65 million years ago during the end Cretaceous mass extinction event. This article has many details and great pictures which describe what and who pterosaurs were during…
-
Preserved Trilobite eggs from the Ordovician of New York State
Sciency Thoughts has a story about pyritized trilobite eggs. The eggs were found associated with 2 Triarthrus eatoni trilobites from the Ordovician Whetstone Gulf Formation (Lorraine Group), in upstate New York. The eggs were found in the cephala (head) of the trilobites, which is similar to the method of reproduction in Horseshoe Crabs. In Horseshoe…
-
Oldest Dinosaurs Found: Evidence of Organized Nesting
Image: Nobu Tamura, www.palaeocritti.com Article except via The Guardian: (click link to see beautiful photograph of fossils) Oldest dinosaur nests discovered in South Africa Massospondylus nesting site – with fossilised eggs and tiny footprints – is 100m years older than any previously discovered – A dinosaur nesting site older than any discovered before suggests that the creatures…
-
Events for Weekend 1/28 – 1/30, 2011
Friday, 1/28 ESCONI Board Meeting, 7:30 p.m. College of Dupage, Building K, Rm 131. Anytime this weekend: Paleoart Exhibit, Lake County Discovery Museum Gold, Field Museum Hatching the Past: Dinosaur Eggs and Babies
