Understanding egg colors can help paleontologists dig into previously-unseen aspects of dinosaur lives. Colorful or patterned eggs might have been important for camoflage, especially against the various lizards, snakes, crocodiles, mammals, and other egg. To find out whether colored dinosaur eggs shared an evolutionary origin with those of birds, Wiemann and her colleagues amassed well-preserved fragments of fossil eggshell from 15 Cretaceous era dinosaurs and extinct birds, as well as eggshell from living chickens, terns, emus, and alligators.
Eggs can come in a variety of colors, shapes and sizes but have you ever wondered what color a dinosaur egg was? Thanks to some special tools, paleontologists have a good idea about what different dinosaur eggs looked like back in the Mesozoic Era. This raises the fundamental question of whether modern birds inherited egg colour from their nonavian dinosaur ancestors, or whether egg colour evolved independently multiple times. Discover our Dinosaur Egg Identification Chart to learn about various dinosaur egg shapes, sizes, and fossil patterns.
Ideal for paleontology enthusiasts, students, and researchers! A 2017 study revealed that - yes - dinosaur eggs were colorful and we've found examples that date back 150 million years. Amniote eggs are distinctly different from those of non-amniotes, such as squishy frog eggs and sticky fish eggs.
Dinosaurs being amniotes provide paleontologists with clues towards uncovering what dinosaur eggs looked like, as the genetic kinship of extinct dinosaurs and birds can be used as a jumping. If dinosaur egg color was a convergent character relative to the colored eggs of crown birds, the same color effect could have been achieved by use of different metabolites. Some bird eggs are very colorful, such as the blue robin egg in the first photo (from the LVNHM bird egg collection).
But no other egg-laying animals, such as turtles and crocodiles, lay colorful eggs. For this reason, paleontologists guessed that pigmented eggshells first evolved in birds, only a few tens of millions of years ago. What color were dinosaur eggs? At least some of them were blue-green, according to new research.
Paleontologists working with fossilized eggs from a dinosaur called an Oviraptor, found that the eggs contain a mix of blue-green pigments. Unsurprisingly, the experimentally.