The first nest of dinosaurs identified in Brazil, where huge necked and quadrupedal females laid their eggs, is 80 million years old and is located in the rural area of Uberaba (MG), in a deactivated limestone mine. Researchers have already identified about 20 eggs at the site, and it is possible that they will find much more evidence of the reproduction of the giant herbivores known as titanosaurs.
Details about the finding have just been published in the specialized journal Scientific Reports. Paleontologists Luiz Carlos Borges Ribeiro and Thiago Marinho, from the UFTM (Federal University of the Triângulo Mineiro), and their Argentine colleagues Lucas Fiorelli and Agustín Martinelli, from the Regional Center for Scientific Research in La Rioja and the Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences, signed the study. in addition to other scientists from Brazil and the neighboring country.
“Who knows, maybe we’ll have something similar to Auca Mahuevo around here?”, Borges Ribeiro told sheet about the discovery. The name may not be famous in Brazil, but it usually makes paleontologists’ eyes shine.
The so-called locality in Argentine Patagonia is home to hundreds of thousands of eggs of titanosaurs, the dinos that were the most important component of the South American herbivore fauna during the Cretaceous period (the last before the group’s extinction). Some of Auca Mahuevo’s eggs have been so beautifully preserved that it is possible to study the anatomy of titanosaur embryos in detail.
The team working in Uberaba was not so lucky, at least for now. The eggs they studied, some of which are still together in what appears to have been the original litter, underwent CT scans, and this did not reveal the presence of 80-million-year-old hatchlings inside them.
However, it is still possible to extract a wealth of information from the structures, whose shape is almost perfectly spherical, measuring 12 cm in diameter and reaching 900 cm.3 volume (almost 1 litre, therefore). Both size and shape are consistent with what is known about titanosaur eggs found in Argentina and Romania.
In addition, a large amount of fossilized skeletons of the group has already been found in the surroundings of Uberaba and other areas of the Minas Gerais territory, confirming that several species must have frequented the place during the last million years of the Cretaceous. Although the young were born measuring just a few tens of centimeters, the region’s titanosaurs could exceed 20 meters in length (from the tip of the snout to the tip of the tail).
The distribution of eggs analyzed so far indicates at least two laying episodes, separated by a considerable time. In addition, the largest and best-preserved brood is structured to suggest that the females laid eggs in more than one layer, digging holes that looked like gourds and covering everything with soil afterwards.
It is also possible to identify the pore system that is distributed throughout the eggshell, whose shape differs considerably from what can be seen in other titanosaur eggs. Pores play a key role in the exchange of gases (especially oxygen) between the external environment and the embryos, and it is possible that the structures developed in a specific way in response to the semi-arid environment that then prevailed in the region that would one day be known as the interior of Minas Gerais.
According to Borges Ribeiro, as the French company that explored limestone at the site has already ended its activities there, the expectation is that new excavations will reveal more details of the titanosaur nests.
The discoverer of the nest, in the Ponte Alta neighborhood, about 30 km from the center of Uberaba, was João Ismael da Silva, a servant of the Cultural Foundation of the Municipality of Uberaba and who works as a paleontology technician at the Llewellyn Ivor Paleontological Research Center. Price at the Peirópolis Cultural and Scientific Complex, Federal University of Triângulo Mineiro.
“In the 1990s, I became aware of the occurrence of dinosaur eggs in Ponte Alta. In conversation with friends of mine who worked in limestone mining, I was able to recover some isolated eggs and, finally, an association of ten spherical eggs”, he says. John Ishmael.
