Unlaid Eggs found INSIDE Dinosaur

Post by **LadyTevar** » 2005-04-15 06:50pm

cnn.com wrote:Scientists find eggs in dinosaur mom
Discovery offers clues on prehistoric reptile's reproduction

Friday, April 15, 2005 Posted: 12:46 PM EDT (1646 GMT)

(CNN) -- A chance to work on a historic dinosaur discovery seems a fitting reward for a paleontologist who first said the word tyrannosaurus at age 3.

In the journal Science, Tamaki Sato describes the discovery of two shelled eggs found inside a dinosaur that died before laying them.

A geologist found the fossilized remains in China's Jiangxi province and sold them to a museum.

"The museum that purchased it did not know there were any eggs inside," said Sato, a paleontologist at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa. "They thought it was just a skeleton."

But as researchers were preparing the 14-by-14-inch pelvis, they discovered the shelled eggs within the female dinosaur's body cavity.

Sato described the eggs as bumpy in texture, somewhat elongated and looking a bit like "pineapple-sized potatoes."

The dinosaur was an oviraptorosaurian, a subgroup of theropods, and probably stood 10 to 13 feet tall when it lived 65 million to 100 million years ago, Sato said.

Theropods, (which means "fierce footed") were carnivorous, bipedal reptiles believed to be the ancestors of modern birds. The clues provided by the Chinese discovery suggest that the dinosaur had a reproductive system with some similarities to ancient reptiles and some to modern birds.

Like crocodiles and some other modern reptiles, this dinosaur had two ovaries and oviducts. But unlike crocodiles, which lay an average of 50 eggs at a time, the dinosaur had the birdlike characteristic of producing one larger, shelled egg at a time.

Scientists previously have found more than a dozen dinosaur eggs in nests in the same region of China as well as in Mongolia.

Sato said combining knowledge from those discoveries with this latest find could add dramatically to the knowledge of dinosaur reproductive biology.

For example, she said, the shape of the eggs, with a slightly pointed end on each one, indicates that the female went to the center of the nest to lay ring-shaped clutches, or groups of eggs.

"By combining that information, we can have a great idea about how dinosaurs laid eggs," Sato said. "It is rare in paleontology that we can study this kind of behavior. This specimen will be very important."

The specimen, which researchers said is in good condition, is at the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Taiwan. It will be studied further to determine when the dinosaur lived exactly and how she died, right before she would have laid the eggs.

Superman · Post by **Superman** » 2005-04-15 07:01pm

I wonder what scrambled dino eggs would have tasted like.

Post by **LadyTevar** » 2005-04-15 07:05pm

Superman wrote:I wonder what scrambled dino eggs would have tasted like.

Like scrambled eggs, I'd imagine. But what an Omelet!

General Brock · Post by **General Brock** » 2005-04-15 07:39pm

Superman Wrote:

I wonder what scrambled dino eggs would have tasted like.

Arggg! This is was a horrific tradgedy! She died with her babies!

And I wanted to make that joke first.

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2005-04-15 07:50pm

It seems strange that they would find an Oviraptorid over 10 ft tall. I didn't know they got that big.

Darth Raptor · Post by **Darth Raptor** » 2005-04-15 10:42pm

unbeataBULL wrote:It seems strange that they would find an Oviraptorid over 10 ft tall. I didn't know they got that big.

Me neither. That would be one hell of a bite.

Solauren · Post by **Solauren** » 2005-04-15 10:54pm

Too bad through some fluke, the eggs arn't still viable.....

But still, first the bone-tissue stuff, and now this.....

I sense something coming.....

As it's been said, i for one welcome our new Dinosaur overlords

Castor Troy · Post by **Castor Troy** » 2005-04-15 11:07pm

Awesome.

I wonder what information they'll get from this.

Next stop, Jurassic Park.

Sam Or I · Post by **Sam Or I** » 2005-04-16 12:23am

Superman wrote:I wonder what scrambled dino eggs would have tasted like.

Taste like chicken

Darth Yoshi · Post by **Darth Yoshi** » 2005-04-16 07:06pm

Solauren wrote:Too bad through some fluke, the eggs arn't still viable.....

But still, first the bone-tissue stuff, and now this.....

I sense something coming.....

As it's been said, i for one welcome our new Dinosaur overlords

Feh, they'll be easily taken care of by the UN cloned supersoldier corps.

Anyway, that's some cool stuff. Does anyone know if the developing embryo gets fossilized?

Mayabird · Post by **Mayabird** » 2005-04-16 07:15pm

Darth Yoshi wrote: Anyway, that's some cool stuff. Does anyone know if the developing embryo gets fossilized?

I know of some dino fetuses still in eggs that got fossilized, but they were close to hatching when whatever happened to kill them before hatching.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2005-04-16 07:39pm

Darth Yoshi wrote:
Solauren wrote:Too bad through some fluke, the eggs arn't still viable.....

But still, first the bone-tissue stuff, and now this.....

I sense something coming.....

As it's been said, i for one welcome our new Dinosaur overlords
Feh, they'll be easily taken care of by the UN cloned supersoldier corps.

Anyway, that's some cool stuff. Does anyone know if the developing embryo gets fossilized?

In an unlaid egg, the embryo would be a pinhead's worth of undifferentiated tissue. All the fossil embryos we've found have been almost fully formed, and their skeletons fossilized.

Shroom Man 777 · Post by **Shroom Man 777** » 2005-04-17 08:57am

If a dino's guts can't get fossilized, how much more a bunch of gooey stuff inside an egg?