[ ''' Fifteen years ago, Mark Norell, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History, discovered a clutch of dinosaur eggs in southern Mongolia.
What seemed unusual about the find was the presence of at least a dozen embryos of Protoceratops, a small herbivorous dinosaur related to the Triceratops.
These embryos appeared to be curled up inside invisible eggs, surrounded by an enigmatic white halo in the surrounding rock. Norell and his team were intrigued—something didn’t quite add up.
Now, more than a decade later, they have unveiled the surprising answer. Soft-Shelled Eggs Were Likely Common Among Dinosaurs !
( so that presumed mosssaur egg from Antartica could also be a dinosaur's too )
■ [ ::: { Scientists Just Cracked an 85 Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Egg Mystery ! } ::: ] ■
● ] https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-just-cracked-an-85-million-year-old-dinosaur-egg-mystery/
^^^^^
Egg clutch sampled for chronological studies. Credit Dr. Bi Zhao
Researchers dated dinosaur eggs directly for the first time, placing them at 85 million years old. The findings link climate cooling to evolutionary pressures that may have doomed some species.
During the Cretaceous period, Earth experienced intense volcanic eruptions, widespread loss of oceanic oxygen, and several devastating mass extinctions. Fossils from this turbulent era still survive today, offering scientists valuable insights into the climate conditions that once shaped different regions of the planet...
'''' We show that these dinosaur eggs were deposited roughly 85 million years ago, in the Late Cretaceous period,” said corresponding author Dr. Bi Zhao, a researcher at the Hubei Institute of Geosciences.
We provide the first robust chronological constraints for these fossils, resolving long-standing uncertainties about their age... ''''
■ ] The majority are thought to belong to Placoolithus tumiaolingensis, a member of the Dendroolithidae family, which is distinguished by eggshells with unusually porous structures.
