Dinosaur eggs with crystals found in China

Paleontologists often discover fossilized dinosaur eggs, but recent findA new oospecies of Shixingoolithus (Shixingoolithus qianshanensis oosp. nov.) from the Qianshan Basin, Anhui Province, East China / Journal of Paleogeography scientists in the Qianshan Depression in China is truly special: fossil eggs of a spherical shape and the size of a grapefruit have not come across to researchers before.

According to scientists, these eggs have features characteristic of the Stalicoolithidae family. How closely related the dinosaurs were cannot yet be answered, but all specimens of this family of fossil eggs have common features, especially the secondary eggshell, which distinguishes them.

The Qianshan eggs are notable for their size, being larger than the common Stalicoolithidae (10.5 and 13.7 cm long and 9.9 and 13.4 cm wide), so they were separated into a new subspecies, which is called Shixingoolithus qianshanensis.

The most interesting thing is that over millions of years these eggs were filled with crystals of calcite, a mineral from the class of natural carbonates. Such finds are quite rare.

What kind of animals laid such eggs is still difficult to say. They are difficult to compare with data on known dinosaur species, so today there are a huge number of families and species known only from their eggs. Scientists classify them in order to keep at least some record of such finds.

Paleontologists believe that the Qianshan Depression will give many more similar discoveries of the Cretaceous period, including number of dinosaur bones: the thickness of the Cretaceous layer of fossils in this region is an impressive 887 meters.