One
city in China now has 43 more dinosaur eggs to add to its already
massive fossil collection. Heyuan is nicknamed “home of dinosaurs”
- a museum there has more than 17,000 fossilized dinosaur eggs,
all of which have been discovered locally in the past decade. Not
long ago, construction workers came across the fossilized eggs while
doing roadwork in the southern city.
The fossilized eggs are round and rock-like. Most of the newly discovered
eggs are damaged, but 19 of them are fully intact and large. Some
have a diameter of almost 13 centimeters.
Researchers say that most of the fossils found there are from dinosaurs
that lived roughly 89 million years ago, including oviraptorid and
duck-billed dinosaurs. Scientists still are working to determine
whether the most recently found eggs belong to these same species.
They analyzed why the Heyuan area has so many dinosaur fossils:
First, its climate many millions of years ago was ideal for dinosaurs
to live, and second, the red sandstone rocks that have formed there
are able to preserve fossils quite well.
The city, which has a population of three million people, has more
roadwork planned. Scientists are hoping this construction unearths
even more fossils.