Experts Discover 68 Million-Year-Old Football-sized Egg, Might Have Belonged to Sea Monster from Dinosaur Era
In 2011, Chilean researchers found an egg fossil just 200 meters away from the remnants of a mosasaur, a reptile dating back to the age of dinosaurs. Researchers believe the egg fossil uncovered in Antarctica could be from an ancient sea monster, Live Science reported. On examination, the egg was found to be 68 million years old. Findings associated with the egg have been published in the journal Nature.
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The egg is the size of a football and was noted to be soft-shelled by experts. The finding immediately captivated the interest of researchers. "There's no known egg like this," study senior researcher Julia Clarke, a professor of vertebrate paleontology at the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin). "This egg is exceptional in both its size and its structure."
Chilean experts located the fossil in a seasonal stream. Initially, the researchers were unaware of the finding's identity. It looked so unique that the team took it to their camp. The egg was labeled 'The Thing' by the team after the 1982 sci-fi movie based in Antarctica, that they watched in their tent.
The fossil eventually came under the custody of the National Museum of Natural History (MNHN) in Chile. Until 2018 nobody figured out the fossil was an egg, but one conversation changed everything. Clarke visited the facility and had a meeting with David Rubilar-Rogers, a paleontologist at the MHNH, during which she mentioned how Antarctica has never been a site of a known fossil egg. On a hunch, Rubilar-Rogers brought out 'The Thing.' Examinations took place and it was adjudged to be an egg fossil.
'The Thing' measuring 11 inches by 8 inches (29 by 20 centimeters) was the second largest egg fossil to be discovered at the time. It was given the scientific name- Antarcticoolithus bradyi (or "delayed Antarctic stone egg" in Greek). The egg's features were most similar to the ones laid by reptiles. Researchers believe that the egg was from a giant relative of this family of animals.
"It is from an animal the size of a large dinosaur, but it is completely unlike a dinosaur egg," study lead researcher Lucas Legendre, a postdoctoral researcher at UT Austin's Jackson School of Geosciences stated. "It is most similar to the eggs of lizards and snakes, but it is from a truly giant relative of these animals."
The nearby remains of Kaikaifilu hervei, a large mosasaur unearthed on Seymour Island made researchers speculate that the egg could be laid by them. Mosasaurs were huge marine reptiles that lived alongside dinosaurs in the Late Cretaceous period, the American Museum of Natural History reported. They were labeled as the 'Lizard King' of the ancient ocean.
Similar to lizards and snakes, mosasaurs belong to the Lepidosauria group, Live Science reported. As per previous studies a mother needed to be around 23 feet (7 m) long to lay such a huge egg. There is no record of any late Cretaceous Antarctic dinosaurs or pterosaurs of this size, which further solidifies the claim that the A. bradyi came from mosasaurs.
If true, the finding would be "the first known instances of live birth in an ancient, extinct species of the snake and lizard family," Darla Zelenitsky, an assistant professor of dinosaur paleobiology at the University of Calgary claimed. Researchers are looking forward to gaining more evidence to make a concluding assertion.