The oldest egg in Antarctica was laid by a huge marine reptile - France 24

Paris (AFP)

A fossil egg discovered in Antarctica, similar to a rugby ball, is the work of a huge marine reptile from the tyrannosaurus era, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

66 million years old, the egg holds many titles: the first fossil egg discovered in Antarctica, the largest soft-shell egg, the second largest egg ever discovered (after that of the Madagascar elephant bird, a volatile disappeared) ...

But its recognition did not come until late: since its discovery in 2011, the fossil had been waiting on the shelves of the Natural History Museum of Chile, its airs of "deflated balloon" having left researchers skeptical. It had even been nicknamed "The Thing" in reference to the film by John Carpenter.

The mysterious object finally came out of anonymity after the visit to the Museum in 2018 of an American paleontologist: Julia Clarke, co-author of the study.

"I showed it to her and after a few minutes, Julia told me that it could be a deflated egg!" David Rubilar-Rogers, one of the discoverers of the fossil, said in a University of Texas press release.

A theory since confirmed by specialized expertise.

"This egg has a soft shell, that is to say that its shell is not very mineralized and very flexible. It is a type of egg now laid only by lizards and snakes", explains to the AFP Lucas Legendre of the University of Texas, also co-author of the study.

To define which animal could have laid such a thing, the researchers made an inventory of the animals present in Antarctica at that time.

"There were a lot of dinosaurs, but most of them were too small to lay such an egg. And those who could have been quite large laid spherical eggs," he adds.

"It really looks like the eggs of lizards and snakes, but it comes from a relative of these really giant animals," he adds. The researcher also estimates that the reptile that laid the egg must have been more than 6 meters long (not counting its tail).

Perhaps a mosasaur, a missing marine reptile, very common in Antarctica at that time.

"This new discovery shows that eggs can be incredibly different in structure and proportion, and we don't fully understand the factors that can influence the variation of these parameters," concludes Lucas Legendre.

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