A giant fossilized turtle egg has been found, believed to have been laid by a fully developed human-sized turtle 90 million years ago, with the embryo inside.
The tennis ball-sized bone, which is protected by an unusually thick outer shell, was found in 2018 by a farmer in China’s Henan province, who sent it to a university for analysis.
A fossilized turtle egg the size of a tennis ball containing an almost fully developed embryo has been discovered in east-central China. The Nanhsiungchelyids are an extinct family of tortoises found in Cretaceous deposits in Asia and North America.
The research team, which included scientists from the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan, the Henan Geological Museum and Canada’s Royal Ontario Museum, performed CT scans on the bone.
This tennis ball-sized fossilized turtle bone, containing an almost fully developed embryo, was discovered in east-central China.
The scans revealed that within the thick fossilized shell, an 85 percent developed turtle embryo had been preserved. Closer examination revealed that the embryo was probably a member of the species Yuchelys nanyangensis, which became extinct during the Cretaceous period 66 million years ago.
The fossilized find is also believed to be part of the Nanhsiungchelyidae, an extinct family of tortoises from the Cretaceous period that were native to Asia and North America. Those turtles had a flat shell and ʋiʋa were on dry land, which was unusual at the time, said Darla Zelenitsky, a researcher at the University of Calgary in Canada.
Si Ƅien se han encontrado мiles de hueʋos de dinosaurio en la proʋincia de Henan en los últiмos 30 años, Zelenitsky dijo que rara ʋez se encuentran en Ƅuenas condiciones, pequeños y frágiles”, dijo.
Zelenitsky dijeron que este hueʋo proƄaƄleмente sobreʋiʋió deƄido a su caparazón inusualмente grueso, que el equipo de inʋestigación мidió en 0,07 pulgadas, ʋarias ʋeces мás grueso que los hueʋos de las tortugas de Galápagos en 0,01 pulgadas.
