Treasure trove of fossil eggs hints titanosaurs nested in colonies

A study of more than 250 fossil eggs found in India suggests that long-necked titanosaurs nested in large groups, but left hatchlings to fend for themselves. rice field

To Riley Black

A treasure trove of fossil nests discovered in India suggests a series of yet-to-be-discovered dinosaurs belonging to the Titanosaurus group and offers clues as to how these animals evolved.

A total of 92 nests and 256 eggs up to 20 cm long were found in the Lameta Formation, a series of rock formations well-known for containing the fossils of giant, long-necked dinosaurs called Titanosaurus. Discovered. The paleontologist had previously identified three Titanosaurus species from bones found in the area.

Guntupalli Prasad of the University of Delhi and his colleagues discovered the nest during fieldwork from 2017 to 2020. The team suggests that there are at least six ovoids (technically called egg species) in the nest. If each egg shape was produced by a different species, the number of known species formed would be doubled.

Based on the nest layout, Prasad and his colleagues believe that Titanosaurus may have buried eggs in shallow pits like crocodiles. They also suggest that, like many modern birds, they nested in colonies, but adult dinosaurs had no space to stay in their nests, so hatchlings survived on their own. I had to go.

Darla Zelenitsky of the University of Calgary, Canada, who was not involved in the study, cautioned against considering six different egg shapes as signs of six different species. Larger or smaller individuals of the same species may lay eggs that appear to be superficially different, or different species may lay eggs that are indistinguishable, she says.

Finding bones and eggs together would provide hard evidence of how many dinosaur species there were, says Zelenitsky. “Having said that, it’s clear that the lameta layer has an interesting aspect of consistently producing different types of titanosaur eggs,” she says.

During the heyday of dinosaurs, this region of western India was a wet, swampy lowland dotted with small lakes. “The plains were close to water sources and had soft soil to bury nests and potential food for young birds,” says Prasad. All of this would have made the area attractive to these dinosaurs.

These wet sediments also help explain why so many dinosaur nests have come to be preserved in western India. As streams, marshes and ponds swelled, nearby nests were flooded and buried.