Dino eggs came in different colors
Pigments found in fossil eggshells tell of nesting habits of some oviraptors
By Meghan Rosen
Dinosaur eggs had the blues.
Pigments detected in 66-million-year-old eggs from China suggest that the shells came in intense shades of bluish-green, scientists report online May 15 in PeerJ Preprints. Picking up on eggshell pigments could help scientists color in the details of dinosaurs’ nesting habits.
“This is very, very cool,” says paleontologist Luis Chiappe of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. The authors’ approach “allows you to reconstruct the original color of dinosaur eggs.” No one has tried this before, he says.