In 2011, Chilean scientists discovered a football-sized fossil off the coast of Seymour Island, near the northern Antarctic peninsula. Although they didn’t know what it was at the time – and it’s just called “The Thing” – new research shows that this is not only the first fossil egg ever discovered. in Antarctica, but also the largest soft-boiled egg ever found anywhere.
In a study published today in the journal Science Nature, researchers from the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Chile dated and formed rocks near the shore where the fossil egg was found from the Late Cretaceous period – about 68 million years ago – and measured the fossil itself to be about 11.4 inches by 7.9 inches (29 centimeters by 20 centimeters). This empty egg, which has fallen in part, is smaller than the elephant ‘s egg, an extinct species from Madagascar whose eggs were about 12 inches by 8 inches long.
But larger than their size, the eggs are small; an elephant egg is about five times thicker than this fossil egg, and the hard shell that the fossil egg needs has special pores and a prismatic coating. In other words, an elephant bird egg is like a large chicken egg. (And giant this doesn’t add too much – an elephant egg can hold around 150 chicken eggs.)
With its soft shell and long shape, the new fossil egg, from the new taxon Antarcticoolithus bradyi, more like a lizard or a snake ‘s egg, which indicates that it could be laid by a large reptile. To test that theory, the researchers compared it to the egg markers of 259 species of lepidosaurs – a subclass of reptiles that include snakes and lizards – and thought it might be a reptile. The egg range was about 23 feet (7 meters) long or longer.
The researchers believe that this mysterious mother may have been a mosasaur, a type of giant marine lepidosaur also found in the area. In the Late Cretaceous period, mosasaurs were among the most terrifying predators in the ocean. They had strong flippers and sharp teeth, and some species grew up to 50 feet (though still 10 feet shorter than the fictional mosasaur seen in 2015 Jurassic World). The fossil content of their stomachs indicates that they ate a variety of wildlife, including fish, seabirds, turtles, plesiosaurs, and more – one mosaic had even eaten a few more mosaics. And while mosses inhabited Antarctica, the continent at the time of the Late Cretaceous looked nothing like the current frigid landscape.
“Antarctica was rich in life,” Dr. Julia Clarke, a professor in UT Austin’s Department of Geological Sciences and co-author of the study, tells Mental Floss. “Forests were a mixture of mixed plant species covering open ground. Large sea reptiles and much smaller coiled ammonites and relatives of live birds hunted in the oceans, and on land, there were medium-sized dinosaurs that are not birds. ”
Since scientists have discovered the remains of mosses and plesiosaurs of all ages in the formation of rocks where the fossil egg was found, some believe it may have been a popular place for creatures. to give birth and raise the young.
“Many authors have thought that this was a kind of nursery site with shallow waterproofing, a hidden environment where the young would have a quiet environment to grow up,” said Lucas Legendre, researcher graduate and lead author of the study, he said in a press release.
If the fossil egg actually belonged to a mosasaur, it could change our understanding of how mosasaurs were born. In South Dakota in the 1990s, skeletal scientists discovered a lizard-like mosasaur called a Plioplatecarpus with five unborn children retained in his abdomen. Because they were not in eggs, mosses were generally thought to have given birth alive. Being there Antarcticoolithus bradyi, however, suggests that some mosses may lay soft-boiled eggs that would hatch immediately afterwards.
According to Clarke, the discovery of the fossil egg is particularly inspiring because it shows “what we have yet to learn about egg evolution, from the first layers of egg moving away from water to the great diversity of eggs and breeding strategies. we will see today. “