Scientists Discover Dinosaur Eggshell Fossils That Will Have You Rethinking Everything

Paleontologists and researchers are celebrating a breakthrough that raises a lot of questions about everything experts previously thought they know about U.S. dinosaurs. And, the discovery is all thanks to a collection of some 4,000 rock fragments, that turned out to be something way more significant once researchers got a chance to take a closer look.

Not only that, but the finding paints a picture of what life was like way back when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth, and what the Earth actually looked like when there were still land bridges between the continents.

Learn what the researchers found, including what it means when it comes to a 30-million-year-old mystery that has had paleontologists scratching their heads for... well, forever.

The scientists working at a dig site located in Utah's Cedar Mountains, specifically the Mussentuchit Member, were surprised when they uncovered a collection of 4,000 odd-looking stone fragments. Upon closer inspection, they realized the stones were actually bits of eggshell, which appeared to date back to the Cenomanian age (around 100 million years ago).

And while finding the remnants of eggs that hatched so long ago is exciting enough, they quickly realized that the eggs belonged to five different types of dinosaurs not previously known to have existed on U.S. land.

The findings were published in the journal PLOS One, and included some details about what researchers were able to uncover about the different dinosaur species, which they say included a crocodile-like dinosaur, three bird-like species, and two different types of herbivores.

“We examine the range of eggshells present in the Mussentuchit Member and assess the preserved biodiversity they represent,” researchers wrote in the paper, which explained how they relied on "structural characteristics" to determine which species the eggs belonged to.

From there, they were able to get a better understanding of what type of flora and fauna would've had to be present in the region in order for those creatures to survive. In short, this discovery gives scientists a chance to update their understanding of what life was like back then for creatures big and small, and including plants.

Not only that, but it proves that there were dinosaurs in the U.S. that were previously only thought to have lived in other parts of the world.

You may remember, experts believe that all of Earth's continents used to be connected in one big structure known as Pangea. According to the United States Geological survey website, this single body existed around 200-300 million years ago, but then it slowly began to separate when a fissure grew across Pangea, causing a rift that created different regions that would eventually come to be separated by massive bodies of water, like the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

But, those rifts grew slowly, and for periods of time there were land bridges connecting different continents, allowing all kinds of different species to migrate from one place to another. According to Discover magazine, some of the species discovered in Utah may have used one such land bridge to travel from Asia to North America, where they coexisted with other species of dinosaurs.

This upends what experts previously believed about dinosaurs, which was a widely held belief that different types of dinosaurs kept to themselves in a single region.

Hopefully researchers can continue to learn more about these dinosaur eggshells, as well as uncover more about what life was like all those millions of years ago.