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The biggest dinosaurs couldn't sit on their eggs
Fossil eggshells believed to be from some of the biggest dinosaurs that ever lived have been found in a surprisingly cool climate far from the equator.
But those massive titanosaurs couldn't keep their volleyball-sized eggs warm by sitting on them.
"They're too big," said University of Calgary paleontologist Darla Zelenitsky, who has been studying the problem. "The nest would be one big omelette."
A new study published on Wednesday by Zelenitsky and collaborators from Japan and Argentina has taken a microscopic look and figured out what they did to keep the eggs warm enough to hatch without sitting on their nests.
By looking at the microscopic pores on the eggshells, the researchers believe titanosaurs used the same incubation technique used by modern crocodiles — burying their eggs in warm piles of rotting vegetation, reports the study led by University of Tsukuba paleontologist Kohei Tanaka, Zelenitsky's former student, and published in Royal Society Open Science.
Titanosaurs were a group of gargantuan long-necked, long-tailed, plant-eating dinosaurs that lumbered on four legs and weighed up to 75 tonnes, or about half the mass of a blue whale.
Volleyball-sized fossil eggs called Fusioolithus have been linked to titanosaurs, and previously found by the dozens in warmer climates.
Then in 2020 and 2024, fragments of Fusioolithus eggshells were found in the Chorrillo Formation at the southern tip of Argentina. The rock formation dates back to the Late Cretaceous, 72 to 66 million years ago, just before the dinosaurs went extinct.
Its exact position has changed a little since then, but at the time, its latitude would have been as far from the equator as Red Deer, Alta., but with a climate similar to that of New York City today, Zelenitsky said.
Fossils found there reveal a lush coastal plain ecosystem where roaming dinosaurs included the titanosaur Nullotitan glaciaris, up to 25 metres long, along with the smaller, two-legged herbivore Isasicursor santacrucensis, tyrannosaur-like megaraptors and small birds. They would have lived among crocodiles, snakes, turtles, frogs, fish, mammals, snails and insects.