Nature First fossil dinosaur eggs found in Kyushu

[thomas]

The Mifune Dinosaur Museum announced on 4 February that the first fossilised eggs from the Late Cretaceous Period (100.5 million to 66 million years ago) were found in Japan. The fossils were found some twenty years ago during excavations in a 90-million-year-old layer downstream from the Amagimi Dam in Mifune in Kumamoto Prefecture and are the first of their kind ever seen in the Kyushu region.

The species of the dinosaurs are unknown. Museum officials said one of the fossils is 27 millimetres long, 10 mm wide and 1.7 mm thick, and the other is 25 mm long, 15 mm wide and 2 mm thick. If spherical, the eggs would have been about 5 to 7 centimetres in diameter and the size of a baseball. [...] The stratum contains many fossils of dinosaurs and other reptiles, including turtle eggs. The fossil excavated in 2003 was stored as a turtle fossil because of its plate-like shape and thickness. But in the autumn of last year, researchers examined the cross-sectional structure in detail with a microscope. They found the fossil closely resembled the Coralloidoolithus egg genus reported from the Cretaceous Period stratum in China. A recent study also determined the other fossil was also an eggshell.

Museum: First dinosaur eggs confirmed in Kyushu region | The Asahi Shimbun: Breaking News, Japan News and Analysis

Mifune Dinosaur Museum (御船町恐竜博物館)

Mifune Dinosaur Museum (御船町恐竜博物館, Mifune-machi Kyōryū Hakubutsukan) opened in Mifune, Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan, in 1998. The museum collects, preserves, researches, and displays the dinosaur fossils found in the area; the collection includes Japan's first fossil from a meat-eating dinosaur...

• JREF
• 8 Feb 2023
• Views: 116
• Category: Kumamoto Prefecture