Massive hoard of 65-million-years old dinosaur eggs found in India

Indian scientists investigating an ancient riverbed in the state of Tamil Nadu in Southern India have discovered by change hundreds of dinosaur eggs. Scientists describe this find to be “very exiting” as it may offer more clues on the extinction of dinosaurs.

The eggs are each 13 to 20 cm in diameter. They were found in clusters of seven to eight and were strewn over an area of 2 square km. According to the researchers, the eggs are estimated to be 65 million years old and were found in layers suggesting the presence of a major nesting site for leaf-eating sauropod dinosaurs. ...

The eggs were found when a team of scientists went to research an ancient riverbed in South India in the state of Tamil Nadu. Instead, the Periyar University team has come across hundreds of fossilized dinosaur eggs.

They were discovered underneath a stream in the Cauvery river basin region in a small village in Ariyalur district near Tiruchirapalli. The finding took the geologists completely by surprise.

The fist time dinosaur eggs were discovered in the region was in 1860 by a British geologist and in the 1990s a dinosaur egg was found in factory, writes the BBC.

Further research

“It is an exciting find and opens up several exciting possibilities,” said Prof. A D Ahluwalia of Punjab University, Chandigarh, for the Hindustan Times. The discovery could add new information or completely change the theory concerning the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Samples of the fossilized eggs have been sent to Germany for further research and further verification.

via Massive hoard of 65-million-years old dinosaur eggs found in India | Astigan.com.

All dinosaurs are not sauropods, but all sauropods are dinosaurs.

Sauropoda (pronounced /sɔːˈrɒpədə/), or the sauropods (/ˈsɔrɵpɒd/), are an infraorder or clade of saurischian ("lizard-hipped") dinosaurs. They are notable for the enormous sizes attained by some species, and the group includes many of the largest animals to have ever lived on land. Well-known genera include Apatosaurus (formerly known as Brontosaurus), Brachiosaurus and Diplodocus. Sauropods first appeared in the late Triassic Period, where they somewhat resembled the closely related (and possibly ancestral) group Prosauropoda. By the Late Jurassic (150 million years ago), sauropods were widespread (especially the diplodocids and brachiosaurids). By the Late Cretaceous, those groups had mainly been replaced by the titanosaurs, which had a near-global distribution. However, as with all other non-avian dinosaurs, the titanosaurs died out in the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event. Fossilised remains of sauropods have been found on every continent, including Antarctica.

The name Sauropoda was coined by O.C. Marsh in 1878, and is derived from the Greek for "lizard foot".^[1]

Complete fossil sauropod finds are rare. Many species, especially the largest, are known only from isolated and disarticulated bones. Many near-complete specimens lack heads, tail tips and limbs.