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Windowing Chicken Eggs for Developmental Studies
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The first dinosaur egg was soft.

Mark A Norell1, Jasmina Wiemann2, Matteo Fabbri3

  • 1Division of Vertebrate Paleontology, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY, USA. norell@amnh.org.

Nature
|June 20, 2020
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

The first dinosaur eggs were soft-shelled, challenging previous assumptions based on modern birds and reptiles. This discovery suggests hard-shelled dinosaur eggs evolved multiple times independently.

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Area of Science:

  • Paleontology
  • Evolutionary Biology
  • Biomineralization

Background:

  • Modern birds and crocodilians lay hard-shelled eggs, leading to the inference of hard eggshells in non-avian dinosaurs.
  • Known dinosaur eggshells exhibit a calcitic structure with distinct ultrastructural layers and pore configurations among major clades.
  • The fossil record for dinosaur eggshells is sparse, hindering a comprehensive understanding of their evolution and homology.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the original composition and ultrastructure of exceptionally preserved dinosaurian eggshells from Protoceratops and Mussaurus.
  • To determine whether these dinosaur eggs were hard-shelled or soft-shelled.
  • To reconstruct the evolutionary history of dinosaur eggshell composition and structure.

Main Methods:

  • Mineralogical, organochemical, and ultrastructural analyses were performed on fossil eggshells.
  • In situ Raman spectroscopy was used to analyze the composition of fossil and extant eggshells.
  • Histological examination and ancestral-state reconstruction were employed to compare eggshell structures.

Main Results:

  • Exceptionally preserved Protoceratops and Mussaurus eggs show evidence of an originally non-biomineralized, soft-shelled nature.
  • Raman spectroscopy and histology indicate an organic composition for these dinosaur eggs, similar to soft-shelled turtle eggs.
  • Ancestral-state reconstruction suggests the earliest dinosaur egg was soft-shelled.

Conclusions:

  • The earliest dinosaurian ancestors laid soft-shelled eggs.
  • Calcified, hard-shelled dinosaur eggs evolved independently at least three times during the Mesozoic era.
  • This evolutionary pattern explains the prevalence of derived, hard-shelled dinosaur egg fossils.