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Unidentified Fossilized Egg Nest Dinosaur Or Other Prehistoric Reptile?


tylerknight

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Hi there everyone!

Just wanted to post a recent find of mine with many more to come! I wanted to start with the most interesting and work backwards.

I recently acquired what I believe to be a fossilized dinosaur egg nest of a small dinosaur species. It was included in a box of other fossils I purchased at a small silent auction estate sale of a collector.

post-11123-0-35411000-1361143445_thumb.jpg

For some reason it won't let me upload more than one photo even though they are below the 2mb size limit.

If someone could explain how to add more I will gladly!

The nest measures in at around 4 1/2" from side to side making these much smaller than any other dinosaur egg I have ever seen in my life.

Please let me know what you all think!

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Hi Tyler,

Welcome to the Forum! The 2mb limit is per post, not per image. If you want to add additional higher resolution images just keep adding them to new posts. I wish I new more about your find so I could help you out but it is well outside of my comfort area. Other members here are very knowledgeable about such things though, I'm sure they'll be along shortly. :)

"They ... savoured the strange warm glow of being much more ignorant than ordinary people, who were only ignorant of ordinary things."

-- Terry Pratchett

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Thanks for taking the time to help me out! I tried just single photos that were not even 500kb and they just said server error. I uploaded them all to a photobucket album so hopefully that works out!

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Do you have any information of where this was found and its age? From all the different dinosaur eggs that I'm familiar with this does not look like one. The size also appears quite small for a dinosaur even a chicken size one. My money says its something else but I dare not take a guess at it.

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Hi there,

Like I stated above, I acquired it from an estate sale with several other fossils. There is no provenance with it unfortunately but I need to find out what they are! I can't think of anything else that it could be. The size is what is throwing me off, but the layout and shape is consistent with some type of fossilized egg.

Anyone else have any ideas?

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I can't tell for sure from the photograph, but it appears that the stone might be igneous in origin. It might be some sort of intrusive feature, like the free edge of a dike or sill.

Rich

The plural of "anecdote" is not "evidence".

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Here is the photobucket link again which contains all of the photos http://s1159.beta.photobucket.com/user/districtmediadesign/library/FossilizedDinosaur%20Egg%20Nest

Thank you for your reply, I included a photobucket gallery in one of my other above posts that show all of the photos I had taken if you are able to take a look at those. I don't believe it to be igneous though as the shape and texture differs much from the surrounding rock. I am not an expert by any means though!

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I do not know what this/they are, but my viewings have not pushed my "eggs" button. They are rather irregular in shape for eggs, do not show a 'seam' where they merge with the matrix, and the surface texture seems neither nubby nor porous. I wish I had something positive to add, as in a suggestion of what it/they might be, but I got nothing.

"There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant

“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley

>Paleontology is an evolving science.

>May your wonders never cease!

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Could they just be concretions? I am at a total loss as to what these could be, it just seems so odd that they are so oddly shaped

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I'll keep scratching my head; sometimes the Forum Magic kicks in later rather than sooner.

In the meantime, how 'bout some free-association thought experiments? Flip it over; could they be burrows of some sort?

"There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant

“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley

>Paleontology is an evolving science.

>May your wonders never cease!

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At first I was thinking no. Now I am not sure what it is from the photos. Doesn't seem like concretions in matrix. I will watch and wait. Eventually you will get a answer. I would like to know myself.

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I know nothing about this specimen, so the following is only an idea: even soft-shelled eggs can be preserved as fossils (e.g., turtle eggs as internal moulds of eggs from the White River Formation; only as an example; it is evident that these are not turtle eggs from the WRF).

So what about the possibility that "the top is the bottom" in the way that they are internal casts of the lower part of soft-shelled eggs in a nest which had been destroyed by a flood or so? If the eggs were soft-shelled, they may have been expanded (like one of the three specimens) at the bottom or contorted at their lower end, and compressed along the longitudinal axis, even if the lower ends were originally more rounded or semiglobular. This may have happened when the eggs were laid or covered with sand by the mother, or under the pressure of overlying sand or other material when the nest was destroyed. This can also explain the irregular form of the ends of the presumed eggs and the terminal sac-like expansion in one of the three specimens.

Does anyone know about reptiles which produce soft-shelled eggs which are not strictly globular, but somewhat elongate? (Turtles, as far as I know, produce eggs which are strictly globular).

This said, I'm far from being convinced that these are eggs, but I have no idea for an alternative explanation.

araucaria1959

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I don't see anything which suggests they are concretions and I haven't seen anything quite like that geologically. I have no idea what they are, but the only soft-shelled eggs with an elongate shape which are that small that I know of would be snake eggs.

Roger

I keep six honest serving-men (they taught me all I knew);Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who [Rudyard Kipling]

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I have done some more research and still cannot find anything even remotely similar as to what these could be. I am confident now that they are not concretions, they are not dinosaur eggs from what everyone is saying here, and from what I have seen of snake and turtle eggs they don't match the size, or shape of those either. The weird thing that I just noticed is that they are gradually big to small. One is small, then the middle is a bit larger, and the remaining one is larger than the other two. There are photos in the photobucket link I included that show a part of one of the mounds where the rock has been chipped away exposing the interior but does not show anything inside. Also on the tops in the close up photos there is a discolouration on all of the tops.

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I swear it almost looks like someone poked the end of a shovel handle into the bottom of a trench and poured it full of cement...

"There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant

“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley

>Paleontology is an evolving science.

>May your wonders never cease!

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I am betting maybe some sort of sand filling into holes in a softer surface. I have seen some very strange shaped bottoms of sandstone layers in my days.

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