A group of chilean scientists discovered in the Antarctic the egg largest of the age of the dinosaurs, of almost 30 inches and 6.5 pounds, which would correspond to a marine reptile that lived more than 66 million years ago.
The finding also makes history by being the second egg is the largest of record.
“With this data we can understand a little more about the form of the reproduction of the large marine reptiles of the mesozoic era or the dinosaurs”, held David Rubilar, a paleontologist at the National Museum of Natural History and one of the scientists who found the remains organic.
More than eight years of research
The fossil, of a appearance rocky oval, like a big ball deflated, was found during an expedition in 2011 by researchers from the University of Chile and the National Museum of Natural History in Seymour island, northeast of the Antarctic peninsula.
After more than eight years of investigation along with american experts from the University of Texas at Austin, this Wednesday in the prestigious journal Nature published the conclusion.
The academic of the Faculty of Science of the University of Chile Alexander Vargas explained that the egg had a soft shell “very thin” and that the mother, a marine reptile that was probably a lizard or a mosasaur, measured “between 7 and 17 meters.”
The discovery marks a turning point both for his enormous size as for its rarity, as it is “unpublished” to preserve an egg with soft shell, which according to the expert, “they tend to decompose with ease and not be preserved as fossils”.
Seymour island, a unique place on the planet
The exploration that made possible the discovery in 2011 was framed in the larger campaign paleontológica de Chile on the white continent, as part of the annual expedition of the Chilean Antarctic Institute (INACH).
The geologists focused primarily on Seymour Island, folded “wonderful and abundant fossil” and one of the few sites where you can distinguish the end of the era of the dinosaurs to the beginning of the age of mammals, makes 66 million years ago.
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