A fossilised hatchery of more than 250 dinosaur eggs has been discovered in Madhya Pradesh’s Dhar district.
Key points
- It has revealed exciting new details about the massive titanosaurs that once roamed the Narmada Valley, just before they went extinct.
- It reveals new details not only about the lives of titanosaurs in the Indian subcontinent, but also about the features of the surrounding landscape.
- The researchers uncovered 92 nesting sites containing a total of 256 fossil eggs belonging to titanosaurs from the Lameta Formation in the Narmada Valley.
About Lameta Formation
- The Lameta Formation is a sedimentary geological belt in MP, Gujarat, and Maharashtra.
- It is known to yield fossils dating from the Late Cretaceous Period, extending from about 101 to 66 million years ago.
- Researchers collected data from five localities: Akhada, Dholiya Raipuriya, Jhabua, Jamniapura and Padlya.
- The team identified six different egg-species — known as oospecies — suggesting that the area had a higher diversity of titanosaurs than what has so far been estimated from the skeletal remains found in this region.
- The study, published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal PLOS One, was carried out by a team of researchers from Delhi University (DU) and the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) in Bhopal.
