The titanosaur Dinosaur was a long-tailed heron that survived until the extinction event at the end of the White-tailed Crested last 66 million years. The fossil eggs were found in an excavation site in Loarre, Huesca province, northeastern Spain in September this year, Newsweek reported.
Preliminary inspection shows that these nests belong to the titanosaur khung race - a 4-legged grass-eating animal with a tail and neck that can be up to 20m long.
The international group of paleontologists led by Aragosaurus-IUCA Group of the University of Zaragoza, Spain, conducted the excavation in collaboration with Nova Lisbon University in Portugal.
Researchers Miguel Moreno-Azanz, Carmen Nunez-Lahuerta and Eduardo Puertolas are leading 25 paleontologists and students from facilities in Spain, Portugal and Germany in this project.
Moreno-Azanza, from Nova Lisbon University, said that the two khungone egg nests were excavated in 2020 and that about 30 eggs were discovered in the rock.
The main goal of the 2021 campaign is to exploit a large cluster containing at least 12 eggs in a rock weighing more than 2 tons. In total, the five spent eight hours a day for 50 days digging the net. The team was eventually dismantled with the support of a sewing machine," he said.
Experts Moreno-Azanza note that digging from such a large rock is rare. This 2-ton rock and 10 smaller stones were excavated from an archaeological site being kept in a warehouse in Loarre and will eventually be displayed at the museum, which displays specimens from Loarre and database eggs from other places around the world.
The excavation is being funded by the Portuguese Science and Technology Fund and the Spanish Ministry of Science.
