{"id":619545,"date":"2026-09-09T18:12:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T18:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/619545\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T18:12:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T18:12:13","slug":"fossilized-eggs-reveal-new-secrets-about-worlds-biggest-dinosaurs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/619545\/","title":{"rendered":"Fossilized eggs reveal new secrets about world\u2019s biggest dinosaurs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fossilized eggs reveal new secrets about world\u2019s biggest dinosaurs<\/p>\n

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The largest dinosaurs that ever lived were able to reproduce at high latitudes \u2014 or regions far from the equator \u2014 and came up with a clever strategy to keep their eggs warm, a study of a trove of titanosaur eggs unearthed in Argentina has revealed.<\/p>\n

Most titanosaur eggs and eggshells, like those of other dinosaurs, have been found in lower-latitude regions closer to the equator, where warmer temperatures would have made incubating the eggs easier.<\/p>\n

Scientists think these long-necked, small-brained, plant-eating giants \u2014 part of a group known as sauropods \u2014 lived in herds and may have migrated over long distances, nesting in the same place for millennia.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know their bones have turned up in places as far south as Antarctica and southern Argentina, and as far north as Mongolia and Texas,\u201d said Darla Zelenitsky, a paleontologist and associate professor at the University of Calgary in Alberta. Zelenitsky is a senior author of the new research, which was published Tuesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThey clearly spent time in higher-latitude areas, but until now it wasn\u2019t known whether they were also nesting there,\u201d Zelenitsky added.<\/p>\n

Unlike some smaller dinosaur species<\/a> and birds today, paleontologists are pretty certain titanosaurs did not brood their own eggs. Their huge size \u201cwould have turned the nest into one giant omelette,\u201d Zelenitsky said via email.<\/p>\n

As such, it\u2019s doubtful that titanosaurs were doting parents. Like most reptiles, they likely laid their eggs and left any resulting offspring to fend for themselves.<\/p>\n

Eggs, however, need warmth to develop and hatch, and sunlight is in shorter supply at higher latitudes. The study suggests that titanosaurs found a way to deal with lower temperatures in the planet\u2019s southernmost reaches, although the climate in the late Cretaceous at that latitude would not have been as cool as today\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most likely scenario is that these titanosaurs laid their eggs in mound nests made of vegetation and soil, where incubation heat came mostly from rotting plant material,\u201d Zelenitsky said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir eggshells were very porous, which means if the eggs were left out in the open, they would lose water, dry out, and the embryos would die. Buried in sand, soil, or vegetation, the nest would stay humid or damp enough for the eggs to survive,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Nests the size of picnic tables<\/p>\n

Researchers discovered the 255 eggshell fragments in the Chorrillo Formation in southern Argentina, 200 miles north of the Strait of Magellan<\/a> \u2014 the sea route at the southern tip of South America \u2014 in 2020 and 2024. They date back 68 million years, when they would have been at latitudes between 55 degrees and 60 degrees south. The clutches of eggs represent the highest-latitude nesting environment known for sauropods worldwide, the study said, and the southernmost definitive evidence of dinosaur eggs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is particularly important about this new discovery, though, is that these dinosaur eggs belonged to titanosaurs, giant, potbellied long-necked dinosaurs,\u201d said Steve Brusatte, a professor of paleontology and evolution at the University of Edinburgh. He wasn\u2019t involved in the research.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the very largest animals in Earth\u2019s history were laying eggs and hatching their babies at high latitudes in the Cretaceous, which is a new fact about dinosaur biology and behaviour that makes us better appreciate their adaptability and resiliency.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paul Upchurch, a professor of paleobiology at University College London, said that sauropod remains are rare at high latitudes and it had been thought that the giants moved to these areas during warm summers before returning closer to the equator.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow that we have eggs from a high latitude, this suggests that they might have stayed there all year, or at least were able to go through their reproductive cycle during the warm part of the year at those high latitudes,\u201d Upchurch, who also wasn\u2019t part of the research team, added.<\/p>\n

Titanosaurs include the largest known dinosaurs, with individuals estimated to weigh up to around 75,000 kilograms (more than eight times bigger than a Tyrannosaurus rex). Dinosaur eggs are rare in the fossil record because the eggshell is relatively thin and fragile, and it breaks down quickly into tiny pieces and is difficult to preserve.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not clear to which species of titanosaur the eggs belonged, but teeth found at the same site were those of colossosaurian dinosaurs, some of the biggest titanosaurs, although not the largest.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf these eggshells belong to colossosaurians, the hatchlings had to have had plenty of nutritious food resources in that environment to start packing on the tonnes to eventually reach their colossal body sizes,\u201d Zelenitsky said.<\/p>\n

Even though these dinos were huge, their eggs were tiny \u2014 about 1\/18,000 the size of the adult dinosaur\u2014 and could have contained about 4 liters of liquid, with hatchlings weighing around 4 kilograms (about 9 pounds).<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, the titanosaur nests would have been large enough to make a distinct impression on the landscape, especially if the dinosaurs nested communally.<\/p>\n

\u201cI envision the nest as a picnic table size mound of dirt and vegetation with the egg clutch buried inside \u2026 so it probably wasn\u2019t an inconspicuous structure,\u201d Zelenitsky said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fossilized eggs reveal new secrets about world\u2019s biggest dinosaurs The largest dinosaurs that ever lived were able to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":619546,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[3858,262908,262907,13650,45185,21466,78460,262906,262909,61,60,16734,15591,67487,82,2713,130842,430,131717],"class_list":["post-619545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-argentina","tag-associate-professor","tag-darla-zelenitsky","tag-dinosaur","tag-egg","tag-eggs","tag-eggshell","tag-high-latitude","tag-huge-size","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-nest","tag-part","tag-sauropod","tag-science","tag-study","tag-titanosaur","tag-university","tag-vegetation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}