A team of construction workers doing some roadwork in the town of Heyuan, Guangdong, China, has unearthed one of the most exciting paleontological discoveries in recent years.
The workers came across the fossils of 43 dinosaur eggs, and 19 of these are in perfect condition.
According to the construction workers, they were doing their usual job, repairing a damaged road in the Heyuan when they discovered the dinosaur eggs. They said that they were not very surprised about the discovery because the town is known as the “Home of dinosaurs”.
In Heyuan, there were discovered more than 17,000 fossilized dinosaur eggs since 1996.
The town’s museum is called Heyuan Dinosaur Fossil Museum and is the holder of the Guinness World Record title for the largest collection of dinosaur fossilized eggs.
The title was won in 2004, when the museum had more than 10,000 dinosaur eggs displayed in its galleries.
But Heyuan is not famous only for its collection of dinosaur eggs. The researchers discovered 11 dinosaur skeletons and approximately 168 dinosaur footprints.
Huang Dong, curator of the museum and a specialist in dinosaurs, explained that the authorities from Heyuan allocated almost $7 million in order to build another museum for dinosaur fossils and a dinosaur theme park.
Dong said that these will help improve the tourism of the city and will also help the dinosaur experts.
The dinosaur eggs that are at the Heyuan Dinosaur Fossil Museum belong to two different species of dinosaurs: the duck-billed dinosaur and the oviraptorid.
The paleontologists have not announced yet to what species the recently discovered 43 dinosaur eggs belong to.
All the eggs are being examined by a team of researchers and according to them, the largest egg of the 43 eggs is approximately 7 inches long. All the eggs look like oval rocks, said that experts.
Also, the dinosaur experts believe that the eggs are about 65 million years old.
According to David Evans, curator of Vertebrate Paleontology of Royal Ontario Museum, Heyuan is popular for being the region where thousands of dinosaur eggs have been discovered.
Also, Evans believes that these fossilized dinosaur eggs are the rarest eggs ever discovered so far.
Evans added that:
“It’s just a quirk of fossil preservation … certain regions in the past had environments that were favourable for dinosaurs to lay their eggs, and those places were also good places for the eggs to become fossilized.”
Image Source: lunarnyc
