New fossil discovery from India throws light on sauropod dinosaurs

INDIA: A team of Indian researchers, for the first time in the fossil history, has discovered an egg-in-egg or abnormal titanosaurid dinosaur egg from the Bagh area in Dhar District, Madhya Pradesh state (Central India). This finding has been published in the latest issue of Scientific Reports, a Nature Group journal, under the title ‘First ovum-in-ovo pathological titanosaurid egg throws light on the reproductive biology of sauropod dinosaurs’.

The Upper Cretaceous Lameta Formation of Central India is long known for its dinosaur fossils (both skeletal and egg remains). Recently, the authors of the above-cited publication documented a large number (52) of titanosaurid sauropod nests near the village Padlya close to Bagh town in Dhar District, Madhya Pradesh, India. While studying these nests, the researchers came across one abnormal egg that merits special attention from the scientific community. The research team found a sauropod dinosaur nest (designated P7) consisting of 10 eggs close to the village Padlya including the abnormal egg (egg C).

Until this new finding from India, no egg-in-egg abnormal fossil egg was found in dinosaurs and for that matter in other reptiles like turtles, lizards, and crocodiles.

The lead author of the paper Dr Harsha Dhiman from the University of Delhi commented that “The finding of ovum-in-ovo egg from a titanosaurid nest opens up the possibility that sauropod dinosaurs had an oviduct morphology similar to those of crocodiles or birds and they may have adapted to a mode of egg-laying characteristic of birds”

– ANI