In 1883, what was believed to be a decorative crystal gemstone was cataloged and placed in the mineralogy collection at the Natural History Museum in London.
Found in central India, the agate, as it is called, is almost perfectly sphericalabout 6 inches in diameter and light pink in color.
Although beautiful, the stone “is not thought to have any other significance,” according to a March 29 press release from the Natural History Museum.
That is until Robin Hansen goes to a mineral show.
Hansen, one of the curators of the mineralogy collection, traveled to France shortly after the museum’s 2018 display of the agate.
“While I was checking out the show, a dealer showed me an agatized dinosaur egg, which was spherical, thin-skinned, and dark agate in the center,” Hansen said in the release. “That was the light bulb moment when I thought: ‘Wait a minute, that looks just like the one we just displayed in the museum!’”
Hansen decided to talk to some dinosaur experts.
He spoke with paleontologists, and they agreed that the agate was the right size and shape to be an egg, and the rock showed evidence that it had once been pressed against other spherical rocks, such as a clutch of eggs in a nest, said the release.
After a closer examination, the researchers found that the agate was lined with a thin white layer, likely a shell.
“It was identified and correctly cataloged as an agate in 1883 using the scientific knowledge available at the time,” Hansen said in the release. “We just found out that this specimen has something unusual – the agate has filled this spherical structure, which turns out to be a dinosaur egg.”
The discovery of the egg
The egg was first collected between 1817 and 1843 by a man named Charles Fraser who was living in India at the time, according to the release.
This means the egg was collected “at least 80 years before dinosaur eggs were first scientifically identified,” the museum said.
Dinosaur shells were not confirmed to still exist until 1923, according to the museum, when an entire nest was found in Mongolia.
It may have been collected before the word ‘dinosaur’ existed, because the word doesn’t exist defined until 1842according to the museum.
The timing of the egg’s discovery means it could be the first dinosaur egg ever found — and they didn’t even know it.
Based on the age of the egg, and where it was found, paleontologists believe it belonged to a titanosaur, the largest dinosaur on Earth, the release said.
Life as a Titanosaur
Titanosaurs lived from 163.5 million years ago to about 66 million years ago, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, and could grow to a height of 85 feet, making them largest animal on earth ever known.
Compared to their large size as adults, their eggs are surprisingly small, as seen by the inch-long agate from India.
“It seems really strange because these would be big animals,” paleontologist Paul Barrett said in the release, “but what they do instead is lay a lot of eggs. A lot of living animals that we know use this trade off , where they invest in a small number of larger eggs or a larger number of smaller eggs.
“It seems that titanosaurs adopted a strategy of laying large clutches of about 30 or 40 small eggs,” he said.
Paleontologists also believe that dinosaurs regularly returned to volcanic regions to lay eggs because it was warm, the release said.
“It also helps explain how egg agate was formed,” the museum said. “It’s possible that shortly after a titanosaur laid its eggs in the hot sand, a nearby volcano erupted.”
Volcanic rock covered a dinosaur nest, and then it hardened, leaving the egg inside the rock, according to the release. The embryo would have decomposed, and the water, filled with silica, would have filled the space, eventually hardening into the beautiful pink rock seen today.
Sixty million years later, it was dug up in India and brought to London.
The egg and other specimens are on display at the Natural History Museum in London as part of the “Titanosaur: Life as the Biggest Dinosaur” exhibit.
Angler snatches ‘river monster’ from Texas waters, terrorizing TikTok. ‘The dinosaurs’
Gray whale found dead on California beach. Now experts know what is likely to kill it
New species of spider — with an ‘unusual’ mating ritual — discovered by chance in the rainforest
‘Miracle baby’ born in Kenyan elephant unit. See photos, videos as the newborn joins the flock