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Often mistaken for tiny boulders by the untrained eye, fossilised dinosaur eggs offer a treasure trove of information about reproduction and evolution of the long-gone reptiles. But with only their rocky remains to go by, we’ve just about dipped our toes in the world of dino eggs. They could have come out wrapped in silk for all we know, but there are some secrets these beasts took to their calcified graves.

A few years back, after considerable poking and prodding of the specimens available to them, researchers found that the first dinosaur eggs were soft. This finding made waves in the palaeontology field because it challenged the eggs’ previous hard-shelled image. However, a recent study has shown that this claim wasn’t entirely accurate either.

In today’s latest dino discovery segment, we will be discussing a fossil cluster of three adult dinosaur skeletons and five litters of dinosaur egg fossils dating back 190 million years — to the Early Jurassic period.

Found in Southwest China's Guizhou Province, the eggs, each cradling precious embryos within, belonged to the Qianlong shouhu — a previously unknown sauropodomorph species. This medium-sized basal plant-eating dinosaur weighed almost 1,000 kilograms and was 6 metres long.

Firstly, its eggs did not align with the commonly categorised "soft shell" or "hard shell" groups. Instead, they bore a distinct attribute aptly termed by palaeontologists as "leathery eggs."

Upon studying the fossil eggs’ microstructure, the Chinese team concluded that the earliest dinosaur eggs possessed a leathery texture, offering enhanced protection against potential damage.

Further, the embryos in the eggs display some differences from the adults, like fewer teeth, proportionally longer skulls, and more vertical anterior margin of the snout. Limb ratios between the embryonic and adult specimens showed that adult Qianlong shouhu was capable of walking on its hindlimbs, but the babies likely walked on all fours.

But here's what makes this study wholesome — the sedimentary remains indicated that this dinosaur may have practised colonial nesting. This is something that birds and reptiles do where they each possess a nest site surrounded by nests of other similar species. What’s more researchers think that the Qianlong shouhu likely provided its young ones with parental care.

The moniker "Shou Hu Qian Long" has been given to these fossils, with "Qian" symbolising their origin in Guizhou Province and "Shou Hu," meaning "safeguard" in Chinese, alluding to the parental nature of the giant creature. Notably, these fossils were discovered back in 1999, marking the earliest instance where a dinosaur fossil preserved an attached egg with its embryo in the world.

Findings of this study have been detailed in the National Science Review and can be accessed here.

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Science

Dinosaur Fossils From China Reveal the Earliest Sauropod Eggs Were ‘Leathery’!