Author: Yan Xinyang Xu Qingqing
Xi'an digging the subway is busy with the Cultural Relics Bureau, and any digging is a cultural relic.
In Heyuan, Guangdong, build a house, build a road, it is possible to dig up dinosaur egg fossils!
This summer, Zhang Yangzhe, a 9-year-old primary school student in Heyuan City, and his mother found and identified a suspected dinosaur egg fossil on the slope of the broken bridge road. Later, through the on-site excavation of the staff of the Heyuan Dinosaur Museum, a total of 11 dinosaur egg fossils dating back 66 million years were excavated at the scene.
Discovering dinosaur eggs while walking can be said to be an "adventure" for many people, but in Heyuan, this is actually not a particularly rare thing. You may not know that this place is simply a dinosaur egg "warehouse"!
Heyuan 9-year-old primary school student found dinosaur eggs by the river during the summer vacation
The undertone of "the hometown of Chinese dinosaurs": there are "eggs" everywhere under the feet
How many dinosaur eggs are there in Heyuan?
The total number is not clear, but by the end of 2004, the Heyuan Dinosaur Museum had collected 10,008 dinosaur eggs unearthed locally, obtained the Guinness World Records certificate, and Heyuan City was also awarded the title of "Hometown of Chinese Dinosaurs" by the Center for Stratigraphy and Paleontology of the China Geological Survey.
By the end of 2018, the number of dinosaur eggs in the Heyuan Dinosaur Museum reached more than 18,000, more than all the dinosaur eggs in all museums in the world combined.
Dense phobia attacks come in waves~
Dinosaur eggs from the collection of the Heyuan Dinosaur Egg Museum. Photo courtesy of Heyuan Dinosaur Museum
Many Heyuan citizens revealed that as early as before the establishment of Heyuan City, their own houses have also excavated a large number of dinosaur egg fossils, because they did not know much about dinosaur egg fossils before, when they were ordinary stones, they were all backfilled to the ground to build a house...
How many dinosaur eggs are still buried under the river source, no one knows.
Some "bold" experts have speculated that taking the heyuan Shixia dinosaur egg fossil burial site (red sandstone area) as an example, the area is about 2.26 square kilometers, of which 1 square kilometer of the core area has found more than 24 nests of 100 bare dinosaur egg fossils and 8 groups of more than 200 dinosaur footprint fossils, and the dinosaur egg fossils buried in the red sand basin of Heyuan 100 square kilometers will be a huge number.
If all the dinosaur egg fossils in the land of Heyuan are excavated, its amount will be a hundred times or a thousand times more than the collection of the Heyuan Dinosaur Museum, which can be described as "egg fossils everywhere under the feet".
Strange dinosaur egg fossils
Dinosaur egg fossils unearthed from Heyuan are rich in variety, as many as a dozen kinds.
The shape of the egg is also varied, with long bars, prisms, ovals, flats, circles and so on. Sizes range from 1.5 cm to 19 cm.
Among them, the egg stealing dragon egg has been confirmed so far. There is also a "wrongful case" here.
Egg fossils of oviraptorosaurs. Courtesy of Heyuan Museum
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Oviraptorosaurus was a small theropod dinosaur, living in the late Cretaceous Period, 1.8 to 2.5 meters long, the size of an ostrich, with long claws and a long tail, speculated to be very athletic, agile, can be like a kangaroo with a tough tail, maintain the balance of the body, run very fast.
In 1923, when the fossils of Oviraptorosaurus were first discovered, a nest of dinosaur eggs and a fossil of a protoceratopsus were found at the same time, and Osborne, director of the Museum of Natural History in New York, thought that it was stealing the eggs of Protoceratops, so he named it Oviraptorosaurus.
It was not until the 1990s that the unjust case of egg theft by oviraptors was cleared, in fact, this nest of dinosaur eggs belonged to oviraptorosaurs, and protocerapidosaurs just passed by.
But it has been named so... It's really wrong.
Prismatic egg of the river source. Courtesy of Heyuan Museum
There are also prismatic eggs, each egg length of 9.6 cm, width of 6.0 cm, through height of 3.8 cm, believed to come from the Mesozoic Cretaceous 70 million years ago, the whole nest of a total of 3 pieces, is the wounded tooth dragon egg.
Living in the Late Cretaceous Period, about 75 million to 65 million years ago, It was one of the most intelligent and robust dinosaurs. It was originally named after its sharp teeth.
Long strips of dinosaur eggs. Courtesy of Heyuan City Museum
This is a long strip of dinosaur eggs, dating back about 70 million years (Late Cretaceous), excavated in the urban area of Heyuan. Exactly what the dinosaur egg is is still unknown.
Pocket egg fossils. Photo courtesy of Heyuan Dinosaur Museum
Pocket egg fossils have crystals inside. Photo courtesy of Heyuan Dinosaur Museum
Pocket eggs unearthed from Heyuan. It is the smallest egg fossil in the world, with a diameter of no more than 2 centimeters and a minimum of only 1.5 centimeters, half the size of a quail egg. There are also crystals inside the egg fossil.
Some experts believe that it is a deformed dinosaur egg, and some experts believe that it is a fossilized reptile egg. More than 10 pocket egg fossils were found on a construction site near the southern end of the Yingke Bridge in Heyuan City.
Crystal dinosaur egg fossils. Photo by Yan Xinyang
This crystalline dinosaur egg, which looks like a coconut, commonly known as the "crystal egg", was born in the late Cretaceous Period about 66 million years ago, and belongs to the national first-class cultural relics, which is very precious and rare.
According to the museum staff, this type of crystal egg itself is relatively well preserved, and when the egg has not yet hatched, it slowly forms crystals in the shell under specific conditions, which is crystal-like and transparent, which is rare.
Why are there so many dinosaur eggs in Heyuan?
Huang Zhiqing, deputy director of the Dinosaur Museum Research Department of Heyuan City, analyzed that the ancient heyuan was likely to be a low-lying swamp, with a mild climate and sufficient rainfall, and the natural conditions were very suitable for dinosaurs to breed and live, which was a natural "delivery room" for dinosaurs to lay eggs.
According to the analysis of the research, it is likely that a mudslide caused the dinosaur ruins to be instantly isolated from the air and were preserved, and later this low-lying land was uplifted by the orogeny movement, and these ancient ruins were able to reappear.
Fossil Cretaceous crystalline round dinosaur egg. Each egg is 9.3 cm long, 8.8 cm wide and 7.0 cm high. 70 million years ago, mesozoic Cretaceous crystal round dinosaur egg fossils, a total of 10 litters, the inside of the egg is crystal-shaped. Image source: Heyuan Dinosaur Museum
So why didn't so many dinosaur eggs hatch?
Dinosaurs with huge bodies suddenly disappeared at the end of the Cretaceous Period 66 million years ago, becoming an unsolved mystery in the history of earth's biological evolution.
Yang Chaoqun, former deputy chief engineer of the Guangdong Provincial Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources, wrote an analysis that the climate of the Late Cretaceous period continued to be hot and arid, and freshwater lakes became salt lakes. Salt lake water is likely to cause damage to the reproductive function of male dinosaurs.
Judging from the current excavations, a large number of dinosaur skeleton fossils have been preserved during the Jurassic period when dinosaurs flourished, but no dinosaur egg fossils have been found.
But in the Late Cretaceous Period, a large number of dinosaur eggs were found, and dinosaur skeleton fossils were rare. This is a direct testimony to the failure of dinosaur eggs to hatch, which led to the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Most of the dinosaur eggs unearthed in Heyuan City are around 66 million years old, during the late chalky period.
According to the collection data of Heyuan Museum, as of now, the museum has more than 18,000 dinosaur egg fossils, and there are only more than 10 dinosaur skeleton fossils. In recent years, the construction sites in Heyuan City have often reported the news of digging out dinosaur egg fossils, but few dinosaur skeleton fossils have been excavated, and there are very few complete dinosaur skeleton fossils.
In April 2015, several nests of dinosaur egg fossils were dug up in front of a hotel in downtown Heyuan. Photo courtesy of Heyuan Dinosaur Museum
Yang Chaoqun pointed out in the article that the example supporting this view is that a British fossil trader found only one embryo fossil of 70 dinosaur eggs from China, which also shows that the fertilization rate of dinosaur eggs is quite low.
In addition, in the strata of the same era as dinosaur egg fossils in South China, uranium-containing sandstone has also been found in some places, and the nuclear radiation of uranium also has a certain negative impact on the reproductive ability of dinosaurs.
In addition to dinosaur eggs, Heyuan also has dinosaur bones and footprint fossils
In general, dinosaur skeleton fossils, dinosaur egg fossils, and dinosaur footprint fossils are rarely found in the same place. However, Heyuan is the only dinosaur site in the world that integrates dinosaur egg fossils, dinosaur skeleton fossils, and dinosaur footprint fossils.
There are very few dinosaur skeleton fossils unearthed in Heyuan. The picture above is a Cretaceous Huang's Heyuan dragon skeleton fossil, with a length of 110.0 cm, a width of 66.0 cm, and a height of 22.0 cm, which is a fossil skeleton of the Mesozoic Cretaceous Huang's Heyuan dragon 65 million years ago, with a total of three individual skeleton fossils, one of which is still preserved in its original state except for the fragile skull that is incomplete and strongly squeezed.
The discovery of " Huang " Heyuan " is a new species of " Oviraptorosaurus " , and its discovery not only provides the first conclusive evidence that oviraptorosaurs were found outside the Gobi Desert of Mongolia , but also provides specimens for the bird status of Oviraptorosaurus.
In addition, in the Heyuan Shixia Dinosaur Egg Fossil Burial Area Reserve, the exposed and hidden dinosaur fossil resources are very rich, in addition to retaining more than 100 bare dinosaur egg fossils in 24 nests, there are 8 groups of nearly 200 dinosaur footprint fossils.
Heyuan Shixia Dinosaur Egg Fossil Burial Area Conservation Area. Photo courtesy of Heyuan Dinosaur Museum
Fossil dinosaur footprints in Heyuan were discovered in December 2001, and nearly 200 dinosaur footprint fossils have been found in 8 groups. Source: Heyuan Dinosaur Museum
A model of dinosaur footprints in the Heyuan Museum. Courtesy of Heyuan Museum
As the "hometown of Chinese dinosaurs", the discovery of dinosaur eggs in Heyuan every three to five minutes is no longer news in the local area.
For locals, identifying dinosaur egg fossils and dinosaur skeleton fossils is also a "doll-grabbing" skill.
Li Xiaofang, the mother of primary school student Zhang Yangzhe, said that because of the urban environment in which he lives, Zhang Yangzhe is full of curiosity about everything about dinosaurs, and he can usually see the science of dinosaur-related knowledge on the street or on campus, so it is not surprising that children can be sensitive to the discovery of dinosaur eggs and notify the relevant departments in time.
According to the Heyuan City Museum, at present, it is normal for local citizens to find dinosaur eggs and send them to the museum when digging roads and repairing houses.