WOW! This is why the Hungarian dinosaur egg is so special

The Hungarian Natural History Museum presented the first dinosaur egg found in Hungary on Thursday in the presence of the rector of the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, and the vice president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The artefact is 85 million years old, and experts found it in Iharkút, Veszprém County, where the Hungarian dinosaur research expedition led by dr Attila Ősi has been working for two decades.

According to 24, dr Edina Prondvai, who is a paleobiologist, a member of the expedition, and a fellow scientist of the MTM-ELTE Paleontology Research Group, found the egg and published her findings. 24 asked her about the discovery.

Ms Prondvai said that the egg is small,

only 3-4 centimetres long,

and it consists of two parts that do not match. It is like a crow egg. Interestingly, they found a lot of shell fragments in the region, so that is why they thought there should be eggs around. There was no embryo in it, and they could not find the nest of the family as of yet.

• Hungary’s biggest dinosaur park is now open
• Dinosaurs in the Veszprém zoo

Determining the species of the dinosaur that laid it is almost impossible since, for that, scientists had to find the “mother”. It is not unique to find such eggs,

but it is still rare luck.

The clade of the egg is the Maniraptora, which were small, feathered animals, and all birds derive from them. However, nobody knows whether such animals were still dinosaurs 85 million years ago or rather birds, she said.

The size of the parents is between crows and chickens. Among the relatives of the Maniraptoran are the velociraptors or the oviraptors. They were predators as well, eating smaller birds and mammals.

A velociraptor. Photo: https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velociraptor#/media/F%C3%A1jl:Velociraptor_dinoguy2.jpg

Their environment was very different since, in Veszprém County, the climate was subtropical 85 million years ago. Therefore, the terrain where the egg was found was the flood plain of rivers, so the forests were under water during most of the year, and it could have happened that she left the nest.

The Hungarian egg is unique because of its form. Experts have said before that a dinosaur egg cannot have such form. Later, a Korean group was able to prove that the Hungarian scientists were right. There are many fragments in Europe from such eggs, but the only fully maintained one is in Hungary.

Source: 24.hu