Up to 40 of the World’s Largest Dinosaur Eggs Were Discovered
The largest dinosaur eggs in the world have been discovered in Russia. That is the claim made by scientists based at the Chechen State University, in the Chechnya republic. The cluster of fossils was found in a mountainside during the process of blasting through rock for road building. At least 40 of the elliptical fossils were found, with diameters of up to 1 m (3 ft), dating to ca. 60 million years ago.
This exciting news and positive media spinoffs are very welcome in Chechnya, an area that has suffered two decades of violence and brutality as a result of two separatist wars and an Islamist insurgency. In an attempt to improve the public image of Chechnya, the head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, has spent many millions of dollars on preservation, construction and projects in the tourism field.
Skeptics Voice Concern Over the Discovery of the World’s Largest Dinosaur Eggs
It now seems as though this good press may not last. The news announcement was soon followed by sceptics in the palaeontological community voicing their concern. Valentina Nazarova, a palaeontologist at the Moscow State University, says that this find is untrue. Dinosaurs apparently laid small eggs, and the locality is also suspect. She was quoted to say that dinosaurs did not lay their eggs while ‘jumping around like mountain goats’.
Dr Aleksandr Averianov, of the Institute of Zoology in St. Petersburg, told Russia’s NTV channel that the find was a kind of sand rock, that real dinosaur eggs would have a different type of structure to the shell.
All this negative press is not stopping Kadyrov and his government. They plan to preserve the area as a nature reserve, hoping that it would bring more tourists and improve the reputation of this troubled area.
If these aren’t the largest dinosaur eggs ever discovered one wonders where the facts about them became scrambled .
