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A Canadian-led group of paleontologists is getting a detailed look at how baby dinosaurs developed inside their eggs, by examining an ancient fossil bed full of embryos.
During the Late Jurassic, about 190 million years ago, huge, long-necked plant-eating dinosaurs called Lufengosaurus gathered together at the site in China's Yunnan province to lay clutches of softball-sized eggs, year after year.
An excavation of the site led by Robert Reisz at the University of Toronto Mississauga has yielded crushed eggshells —the oldest dinosaur eggshells ever found — and 200 tiny bones from at least 20 Lufengosaurus embryos, including some that amazingly still appeared to have some protein attached to them, the researchers reported in the journal Nature this week.
The flooding likely occurred at slightly different times each year over a number of years.
"The eggs were caught at different stages of development," Reisz said in an interview. "That's what makes this project really exciting."
Reisz said the bones were so much older than any that had ever yielded any protein before that he was skeptical the Taiwanese researchers would find anything. "Basically, normally, I would not have thought even to try it," he recalled.
including some that amazingly still appeared to have some protein attached to them
Originally posted by oniraug
if they cloned a dinosaur wouldn't it be far from Jurassic park since the atmosphere is different now than millions of years ago?
Originally posted by ChaoticOrder
Originally posted by oniraug
if they cloned a dinosaur wouldn't it be far from Jurassic park since the atmosphere is different now than millions of years ago?
That's a very good point actually. I think the atmosphere was much more oxygen-rich back then. I actually wouldn't be surprised if they were incapable of living within our current atmosphere. We'd probably need to build a special containment zone for them with an artificial atmosphere.
Originally posted by ChaoticOrder
Originally posted by oniraug
if they cloned a dinosaur wouldn't it be far from Jurassic park since the atmosphere is different now than millions of years ago?
That's a very good point actually. I think the atmosphere was much more oxygen-rich back then. I actually wouldn't be surprised if they were incapable of living within our current atmosphere. We'd probably need to build a special containment zone for them with an artificial atmosphere.