The first dinosaur eggs were found by the well-known geologist Jean-Jacques Pouech in Southern France in the 1860s. This first discovery was followed by another one five years later in the same country. Since then, paleontologists have been intrigued by these mammoth creatures and have been exploring them.
China’s Heyuan Museum claims to have the most number of dinosaur eggs (more than 10,000). While making discoveries of eggs and fossils dating back to hundreds of millions of years, scientists have to be extra cautious about filtering out the fake ones. It is rather tricky to differentiate between a dinosaur egg from millions of years ago and calculus, concretions, and other fossils. One such case arose from Chechnya, where the paleontologists made claims about discovering the largest dinosaur egg that turned out to be concretions instead.
The largest specimen discovered so far is the one that is 30 centimeters long and has a girth of 25.5 centimeters. The egg is big enough to hold 3.3 liters of water. It was laid by a 12 meters long dinosaur Sauropod, which lived about 90 million years ago.
These eggs were first discovered in China in the early 1900s but never made to an official report. They were discovered during a rock formation in the Hunan Province in China. It is claimed that this largest dinosaur egg belongs to the Late Cretaceous period that existed some 90 million years ago.
This world’s largest dinosaur egg ever discovered had six to eight more eggs in the clutch, and they were all given a separate scientific name. This egg was claimed to be related to another large fossil discovered before named as “Baby Louie.” It was transported to the United States in 2001, where a paleontologist studying this egg gave it its name. Scientists studying this largest egg inferred that this belongs to the group of dinosaurs who were referred to as the meat-eating dinosaurs (carnivorous).
Phillip Curie and his co-author have written that an egg of this size indicates how big their species were. Even the babies of this species are speculated to be huge, which is why they are known as “baby dragons from China.”
Initially, the paleontologists mistook these large eggs as similar to tyrannosaur eggs. However, the scientists were blown away after further examination wherein they found out that the skull of the fossils of these eggs might be related to the feathered specie of dinosaurs, namely, caenagnathids or oviraptorosaurs.
Though the word “oviraptorosaurs” translates to “egg thief,” scientists inferred that this specie used its teeth and long feathers to protect their eggs. The size of this world’s largest dinosaur egg tells us how big the adults of this specie were. It is speculated that at full growth, this humongous creature would have weighed about two tons.
All in all, the discovery of fossils and eggs like these help us understand the history of our earth and the creatures that inhabited it. Finding such a huge egg in good condition is extremely rare. As these eggs and fossils date back to more than hundreds of years, they are most likely to be dissolved in the earth or eaten by a scavenger.
Moreover, it is essential to identify and report false claims of finding large dinosaur eggs as there have been numerous issues. There have been false claims made by several people, and it falls on the scientific community to look at every new claim with skepticism and then investigate the reality.
More reading:
- Dinosaur egg (Wikipedia)