Construction workers in China stumbled upon dinosaur eggs an estimated 130 million years old while blowing up a boulder.
Scientists have just found a cluster of dinosaur eggs in China that were perfectly preserved, and it’s all thanks to construction workers who were building a new school. Authorities found up to 30 eggs in the area, which has been home to other dinosaur discoveries, and the eggs are an estimated 130 million years old.
Fortunately, the eggs survived despite the workers using explosives to break through a boulder which led to the discovery. A worker noticed a nest of eggs and some shell fragments as the other workers took away the debris, and that resulted in a halt to operations so that experts could be called to the site.
It’s not quite clear what species the eggs belong to, as more study will be need to learn more about them. Specifically, they were found in the city of Ganzhou in the Jiangxi Provine, and the surrounding area is one of the most productive regions in the world when it comes to oviraptorosaurian species.
The following is an excerpt from Wikipedia on oviraptorosauria.
Oviraptorosaurs (“egg thief lizards”) are a group of feathered maniraptoran dinosaurs from the Cretaceous Period of what are now Asia and North America. They are distinct for their characteristically short, beaked, parrot-like skulls, with or without bony crests atop the head. They ranged in size from Caudipteryx, which was the size of a turkey, to the 8 metre long, 1.4 ton Gigantoraptor.[4] The group (along with all maniraptoran dinosaurs) is close to the ancestry of birds. Analyses like those of Maryanska et al (2002) and Osmólska et al. (2004) suggest that they may represent primitive flightless birds.[5][6] The most complete oviraptorosaur specimens have been found in Asia.[7] The North American oviraptorosaur record is sparse.[7]
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