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Around 90 million years ago, especially in what is now central China, a giant tortoise laid an egg the size of a tennis ball.
Its shell is so dense that this egg has kept an embryo inside for tens of millions of years.
The discovery of a turtle egg is attributed to a Chinese farmer, which was found in 2018, and he donated it to a university
Next, a research team analyzed the egg and its rare embryo, and for the first time, scientists were able to identify types of turtles.
The embryonic period in the era of dinosaurs, according to the new study published in the journal “The Royal Society”.
Scientists say this specimen sheds light on the cause of the extinction of its species, the land turtle
66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous period, when a comet hit Earth and killed the dinosaurs.
After examining the turtle’s egg, the researchers said the thick eggshell allows water to enter through it.
Hence, which is explained by the fact that the egg clutches were buried in deep underground nests in moist soil
To preserve them from drying out in the arid environment of central China at the end of the Cretaceous period.
The researchers also suggest that this species of turtle was unable to adapt to “colder climatic and environmental changes after mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous”.
Human-sized turtle
The egg was discovered by a Chinese farmer in Henan Province, an area famous for the thousands of dinosaur eggs that people have found there over the past 30 years, said Darla Zelenitsky, associate professor of paleontology at University of Calgary in Canada and Principal Investigator. on the study.
But Zelenitsky notes that compared to dinosaur eggs, turtle eggs – especially those with preserved embryos – rarely degrade because they’re so small and fragile.
According to the research team’s findings, the thickness of the eggshell discovered is six times thicker than that of chicken eggs.
embryo development
Researchers used micro-tomography to create virtual 3D images of the egg and its embryo
Comparing these images with living turtle species from afar, the researchers found that the fetus had developed about 85% more.
The team noted that part of the eggshell was broken, so it “may have tried to hatch”, but apparently failed.
But this egg wasn’t the only one found for so long; Two clutches of eggs – with thick shells – have been discovered in Henan Province, dating from the Cretaceous Period.
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