A rock containing agate that was first classified in 1883 at London’s Natural History Museum is actually a 60-million-year-old dinosaur egg. Researchers found that the eggshell’s shape and surface were consistent with those of titanosaur eggs from China and Argentina. Despite being the largest land animal to have ever existed, the titanosaur laid large clutches of around 30 to 40 small eggs at a time.
These large clutches of small eggs would mean that rather than reproducing like a blue whale or an elephant, which give birth to a single large baby after a prolonged pregnancy, titanosaurs reproduce more like sea turtles or crocodiles. Scientists believe that volcanic activity causing the egg to become encased in solidified volcanic rock, with agate crystal replacing the internal structures after silica-rich water made its way into the egg cavity.
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Dinosaurs have the advantage that they just can just lay a lot of eggs in one go very quickly, and could probably lay several of those really large clutches a year. It looks like they just laid a lot of eggs and hoped that some of them made it to adulthood, rather than laying one or two that they then had to invest a lot more parental care in when hatched,” said Professor Paul Barrett, expert at the Natural History Museum.
