Dinosaurs ugly colored eggs – the scientists

This strengthens the link between dinosaurs and ostriches.The tradition is to postpone the colored egg appeared among feathered dinosaurs. This article was made by scientists in an article in the journal Nature, reports the Chronicle.info with reference to Know.

This discovery dramatically changes the impression of the evolution of eggs. For nearly two centuries, ornithologists believed that different lines of the ancestors of modern birds have "invented" this form of protection of their offspring independently from each other.

Now the scientific community suggests that it appeared on the dinosaurs started to hatch the eggs.

In modern birds there are eggs of different colors, but pure white are not rare. White and eggs, which are all modern reptiles, it was considered that they were in ancient times, and the coloring began to appear from their descendants much later.

Fossilized dinosaur eggs, which are found today, usually dark brown, but this color they have acquired in the process of fossilization and fixing rust particles, iron oxides.

Heyuannia huangi. These feathered dinosaurs were like small ostriches, lived about 66 million years ago. Their eggs were discovered in China is distinctly blue-green.

Whether this was their original color, or color in the race of fossilization, and filling in some mineral? To find out, Yale paleontologists have drawn attention to the blue eggs of modern birds, such as Robins or some ostriches.

Blue-green color gives the pigment biliverdin, often in combination with red-brown protoporphyrin.

Dinosaur eggs and traces of these pigments, the researchers examined using mass spectrometry. The article, published in the PeerJ journal, they report this finding.

Discovery of American scientists strengthens the evolutionary link between oviraptor and today's ostriches. Apparently, extinct dinosaurs, and ostriches, have been widely observed in the field, and have been vigilantly guarded by the offspring. The coloring of the shell could be used to monitor the temperature and the temperature, for the optimal development of the offspring.