Tuesday, November 17, 1998 Published at 18:04 GMT
Dinosaur 'lost world' discovered
Remarkable: The fossilised skin of a sauropod dinosaur embryo
Scientists have unearthed a remarkable dinosaur nesting ground strewn with thousands of fossilised eggs.
As well as tiny embryonic bones and teeth, many of the eggs contain patches of delicate fossilised skin, providing the first glimpse of the soft tissue covering baby dinosaurs.
The nesting site was found near Auca Mahuida in the Patagonia desert in southern Argentina.
"We knew from geological maps that rocks of the right age were exposed in this area, but no-one had ever looked for dinosaur fossils there before," he said.
The discovery by the team of scientists from the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Museo Municipal Carmen Funes in Argentina, represents a number of scientific firsts.
"To wander into an area littered with dinosaur eggs, a number of which turn out to have embryos in them and skin casts, is the kind of thing you dream about. It very, very rarely happens," said Dr Dingus.
Fossilised eggs are so plentiful at Auca Mahuevo - huevos is Spanish for eggs - that it is virtually impossible to walk without crushing shell fragments under foot.
"You see eggshells everywhere," said Luis Chiappe of the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Scientists found so many embryonic remains that it appears a disaster struck the nesting ground, keeping many eggs from hatching.
Floods may have penetrated the porous shells and drowned the embryos, Chiappe said.
The flooding also could have carried in layers of silt that kept the eggs so well-preserved.
The fossil skin shows a scaly surface much like that of a modern-day lizard.
The egg clusters do not reveal if the adult dinosaurs cared for their young or even if they made well-formed nests.
The research has been published in the scientific journal Nature and will also be featured in the December issue of National Geographic.