Portuguese and Spanish paleontologists are currently excavating a (late Cretaceous) 68 million-year-old deposit of dinosaur eggs near the Pyrenees in Spain where they hope to find the first dinosaur embryos in the country.
On talking about the find, dinosaur egg specialist and team member, Miguel Moreno-Azanza, stated that the “deposit is 68 million years old and contains 30 dinosaur eggs, but we expect it to have four different nests which may contain more than 100 eggs.” Given the state of conservation “these embryos of the last European dinosaur would be the first discovered in Spain. He quickly went on to say that finding dinosaur eggs anywhere in the world is a rarity.
The international team estimates that the eggs, which are in good condition, belong to the Sauropod Tyrannosaurus dinosaurs, a long necked four-legged herbivore and could reach 30 metres in length. They were, however, terrorised by Tyrannosaurus Rex. The nest was found in rocks that experts believe are more recent than dinosaurs, so “there is more potential for finding dinosaur remains and other deposits along the Pyrenees.”
The deposit was found at the end of 2019 by José Manuel Gasca, a Spanish paleontologist and trail runner who found them during a training session. Unfortunately, the pandemic put a stop to any fieldwork until last week, but researchers will remain on site until October.
The excavations are being carried out by a team composed of researchers from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa and the Museu de Lourinhã, in Portugal, and from the Aragosaurus Group at the University of Zaragoza, in Spain. Among the researchers are Octávio Mateus and Miguel Moreno-Azanza, from Universidade Nova de Lisboa, collaborators at the Museu da Lourinhã and two of the world’s greatest specialists in dinosaur eggs.
This research is funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology of Portugal.
Samantha Gannon
info at madeira-weekly.com
