Robert Reisz

On Eggshells: What the world's oldest eggs reveal about dinosaur evolution

Blake Eligh

A study of the world’s earliest known dinosaur eggs reveals new information about the evolution of dinosaur reproduction. 

An international team of researchers led by Robert Reisz of the Department of Biology at the University of Toronto Mississauga studied the fossilized remains of eggs and eggshells discovered at sites in Argentina, China and South Africa—widely separated regions of the supercontinent Pangea. At 195 million years old, they are the earliest known eggs in the fossil record, and they were all laid by a group of stem sauropods—long-necked herbivores that ranged in size from four to eight metres in lengthand werethe most common and widely spread dinosaurs of their time.

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