It is shaped like a rugby ball. A fossil egg discovered in 2011 in Antarctica is the work of a huge marine reptile from the time of tyrannosaurs, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature .
66 million years old, this egg is the second largest ever found after that of the Madagascar elephant bird, a volatile extinct. But his recognition did not come until late. The fossil has been patient on the shelves of the Natural History Museum of Chile since its discovery, its airs of "deflated balloon" having left the researchers doubtful. It had even been nicknamed "The Thing" in reference to the film by John Carpenter.
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Nuestro Jefe del Área de Paleontología, @dRubilarRogers, fue parte del equipo que descubrió un gigue huevo de mosasaurio en la Antártida, hallazgo de mundial alc sido publicado en @Nature.
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A soft shell egg
The mysterious object finally came out of anonymity after the 2018 visit to the Museum by Julia Clarke, an American paleontologist. "I showed it to her and after a few minutes, Julia told me that it could be a deflated egg!" "Said David Rubilar-Rogers, one of the discoverers of the fossil, in a statement from the University of Texas.
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 Lucas Legendre also co-author of the study.
A reptile over 6 meters
To define which animal could have spawned 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 big enough lay spherical eggs, ”says the researcher.
The egg "really looks like the eggs of lizards and snakes, but it comes from a parent of these really giant animals," adds Lucas Legendre, who also believes that the reptile that laid the egg must have done more 6 meters long. It could be a mosasaur, a extinct marine reptile very common in Antarctica at that time.
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- Paleontology
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