Scientists Discovered 100 Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Eggs!

Hinzugefügt: 2026-06-08

[00:00:00]Hi, it's Katrina. Scientists are officially blasting [music] dinosaur eggs with lasers. No, really. And wait until you hear why. From the spikiest dinosaur in history discovered in Morocco to a massive beast in Thailand that rivals a blue whale, we are diving into the latest mind-blowing discoveries in paleontology. Let's get [music] into it. Scientists blast dinosaur eggs with lasers. I never thought I'd see the day that scientists started blasting dinosaur eggs with lasers, but here we are. Researchers in China recently threw open a window to the past by bombarding dinosaur eggs with a laser beam. Not just for fun, but to date them for the very first time in history. Dating a fossilized egg is next to impossible, or at least it used to be because scientists had no technology to pull it off. Now, they've come up with a technique that uses a micro laser aimed at the eggs to vaporize small portions of eggshells. Whenever an eggshell is hit by the laser, it releases a cloud of radioactive uranium atoms. Uranium and dinosaur eggs are a match made in heaven because uranium decays into lead at a rate that we understand. Researchers easily deciphered the age of the eggs by measuring the ratio of uranium to lead in their test samples. It's a technique known as UPB dating and it's used to expose a fossil's hidden atomic clock.

[00:01:27]The test confirmed the dinosaur eggs to be from 85 million years ago, lining up with the upper Cretaceous.

[00:01:34]Previously, if scientists wanted to know how old dinosaur eggs were, they had to date materials found near the dinosaur eggs. For example, they had to rely on things like ash, zircon crystals, or volcanic rocks to indirectly date fossils near them. That's obviously a huge problem because these other materials could have been deposited before or after the eggs were laid, and the materials around the eggs often don't contain enough radioactive elements to get a proper date anyway.

[00:02:04]The old laser and the egg technique seems to work the best. It revealed that these eggs came from the last years of the dinosaurs with the upper Cretaceous lasting from 100 to 66 million years ago. The age came to an end on that fateful day when an asteroid entered the atmosphere. But wait a minute, whose eggs are these? I haven't even told you about the eggs. I was so busy talking about laser beams. The study was focused on 28 eggs from Xixia County in Central China. It's a site so rich in eggs, it's practically an egg museum. There are over 3,000 partially exposed and occasionally intact dinosaur eggs from a multitude of different animals. That's one of the things that makes this egg playground so important to paleontologists.

[00:02:51]There are different nests from different dinosaurs, showing off a diversity of shell structures, nesting styles, and egg sizes. That being said, there is still one dinosaur who laid the most eggs here. It is a mysterious creature called Placo oolithus tumiaolingenesis.

[00:03:09]I don't know if I said that right, but it is considered an oo species. An oo species is one defined only by its eggs.

[00:03:17]What that means is that scientists have not physically found any skeletal remains. They only know about the species from its eggs. Kind of only getting to know someone by looking at their shoes. Even without skeletons though, eggs can tell us a lot about dinosaurs and life during the late Cretaceous. 85 million years ago was a time of dynamic climate change. There was an increase in volcanic activity, [music] a sudden drop in oxygen levels in the oceans, and a rise in global cooling. These eggs could hint at what happened when temperatures dropped around the world and dinosaurs had to adapt. For example, the eggs are oddly porous, way more porous than eggs found in other places.

[00:04:00]Could this have been an adaptation to a cooling world? Let me know your thoughts. And now for a new humongous dinosaur that was just discovered. But first, I want to give a big shout out to Jake from State Farm and Mr. Hearst.

[00:04:13]Thanks so much for watching and supporting this channel. If you are new here, click on the join button to check out our membership program. A colossal dinosaur in Thailand. You won't believe what a team of paleontologists just discovered in Thailand. This story is hot off the presses, so there isn't too much information about it, but I couldn't wait. I need you to hear about the largest dinosaur ever discovered in Southeast Asia. This magnificent discovery was announced by scientists at the University College London. In the Thai province of Chaiyaphum, a hotspot for dino bones, the remains of Nagatitan chaiya- phumensis were uncovered about a decade ago. But it was only now that scientists dug its bones out of storage and proclaimed it a brand new species.

[00:05:00]What came out of storage was a pile of bones, including several vertebrae and a few ribs, along with two leg bones and fractions of the pelvis. The team analyzed the bones and identified them as belonging to a new species of sauropod. You probably know that sauropods were the biggest land animals in history. They probably weren't as big as blue whales, but they were absolutely the largest terrestrial animals that ever walked the surface of the earth.

[00:05:27]If there was anything bigger, scientists haven't found it yet. This particular species wasn't a titanosaur, but it was still really big. It weighed in at a respectable 27 tons and measured 88 ft long. That makes it almost the same length as a blue whale and the same weight as nine adult Asian elephants.

[00:05:48]That is a true dinosaur titan, even if it isn't a titanosaur. Sittidetch Saengkhao agrees with my assessment. He is the Thai PhD student who led the study on the new dinosaur. Sittidetch said it weighed 10 tons more than Dippy the Diplodocus, one of the most famous large dinosaurs. But, he also said it was dwarfed by other sauropods like Patagotitan who weighed 60 tons. And in case you were curious, here is Sittidetch himself standing next to the front leg bone. Forget about taking pictures with celebrities, we should all take more selfies with dinosaur bones.

[00:06:24]The long-necked plant-eating dinosaur lived between 120 and 100 million years ago, making it one of the youngest dinosaurs ever found in Thailand. The oldest is, oddly enough, another sauropod, but it lived 70 million years before E. Chayamusensis during the early Jurassic. As of right now, Thailand has 14 unique species not found anywhere else in the world. One of the reasons Thailand doesn't have more dinosaur bones is that near the end of the Cretaceous, Thailand became a shallow sea. It was a fertile stomping ground for large dinosaurs for millions of years, but then the tide rolled in and changed the landscape. That's why most dinosaurs found in the country are from older periods like the Jurassic. Don't fret, though. Paleontology is alive and well in Thailand. The massive sauropod was discovered alongside the fossils of sharks and monstrous crocodiles, so there are still plenty of beasts to find. Going forward, Sittidetch's dream is to expose Thailand's unique dinosaurs to the world. Who knows? Maybe the next Jurassic Park movie will have a cameo from a Thai sauropod. Nanotyrannus rises like a phoenix.

[00:07:37]For decades, scientists thought a small skull belonging to an animal called Nanotyrannus lancensis may have really belonged to a juvenile T-Rex. It looked so much like a Tyrannosaurus Rex, only smaller, that a lot of scientists believed it was just a young T-Rex, not its own species. They argued it was a juvenile who hadn't finished growing yet. Now, those naysayers have been proven dead wrong. New research has finally settled the debate once and for all. Ashley Poust and Christopher Griffin led the team that analyzed the original Nanotyrannus fossil, the skull that defined the species. It's been sitting at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History since around the time it was discovered in 1942. Back during its original discovery, scientists labeled it a Gorgosaurus. If you have never heard of Gorgosaurus, listen up. [music] This was a monster of a dinosaur whose name means dreadful lizard. Gorgosaurus lived in North America near the end of the Cretaceous from around 75 million years ago to the extinction event.

[00:08:40]Fossils have mostly been Alberta and Montana, and they are always huge.

[00:08:45]Gorgosaurus measured 30 ft long and weighed in at over 3 tons. It had impressive body mass, dozens of sharp teeth, and forelimbs that made it hard to scratch its nose. Its main diet was probably hadrosaurs and ceratopsids, meaning Triceratops and its relatives.

[00:09:03]Basically, it was a killing machine. And so was Nanotyrannus, but on a smaller scale. It only measured about 18 ft in length, making it far smaller than Gorgosaurus or a T-Rex. Its small stature, in quotations, is exactly why researchers in 1988 tossed out the Gorgosaurus identity and gave it a new name, Nanotyrannus. Ashley and Christopher confirmed the species to be distinct by doing a bunch of different tests on its skull. They used bone histology, which is the study of fossilized bone microstructures.

[00:09:37]By analyzing the small throat bone known as the hyoid bone and identifying growth patterns, they proved the animal had already reached maturity. I just want to give a little shout out to Ashley Post who really showed off her creativity and ingenuity in this study. She was the one who compared the dinosaur's hyoid bone to the bones of other species, >> [music] >> something that no scientist has thought to do before. She compared the bone to those of living ostriches, lizards, and alligators. Since all three of these animals are close modern relatives of dinosaurs, their hyoid bone development is all quite similar. By looking at how an ostrich's throat bones grow as it reaches adulthood, Ashley was able to confirm the Nannotyrannus' bone was also from an adult. It's really incredible because Ashley has just opened up new ways to study fragmented dinosaurs. Way to go. Bizarre armored dinosaur. One of the most unusual dinosaurs ever is even weirder than scientists first thought.

[00:10:38]When researchers found the fossilized bones of Spicomellus afer, they were already surprised enough. Its fossils are unlike any known animal of the past 500 million years, but now newly discovered fossils have shown that Spicomellus afer was even stranger. The first fossil appeared almost like a gift from dinosaur god. In 2019, paleontologist Professor Susannah Maidment received a dinosaur rib bone from a fossil dealer out of Cambridge.

[00:11:07]The bone was unlike anything Susannah had ever seen. It had incredible protective spines fused directly to its surface. [music] There is no animal known to science that has protective spines fused to the surface of its bones. This is the only example ever. As you can imagine, Susannah and her colleagues were extremely excited, but they were also a little frustrated because the fossil entered the commercial fossil trade under suspicious circumstances, there was no way to know where exactly it came from. It was supposedly found in Morocco, but Morocco is a big place. Not to worry though, Susannah had played her fair share of Clue as a child. She was ready to put on her detective hat and go hunting for more fossils. A team of British, American, and Moroccan paleontologists went on an expedition to search for more Spicomellus fossils.

[00:11:58]They ended up finding an entire body.

[00:12:02]Susannah and the team were hoping to find a few more bones, just something to learn more about the beast, but they found a whole skeleton. And guess what?

[00:12:11]The dinosaur's entire body was covered in spikes like a porcupine. But these weren't porcupine quills. These were spikes the size of stalagmites you would find in a cave fused to the bones as a natural weapons. Imagine if you could grow swords from your elbows. That's the kind of dinosaur we're dealing with here. This dinosaur had spikes jutting out of its ribs, its hips, and its tail weapon. After all, it is a type of ankylosaur, so of course it's going to have a tail weapon. But [music] it isn't a mace like most ankylosaurs have, it's a spiked club. Spicomellus also had blade-like bones that ran down the sides of its body along with a bony collar around its neck ringed with spikes. I don't think there were any predators crazy enough to even try eating this dinosaur. The longest of its spikes were over 3.3 ft long. So even for someone like T-Rex, attempting to eat one of these creatures would be the same as you trying to eat a pufferfish fully puffed up. Spicomellus is the oldest known ankylosaur ever discovered, which is crazy because it's also the most armored. That would suggest that as ankylosaurs developed over millions of years, they lost some of their spiky armor. Spicomellus is from 165 million years ago and is the only ankylosaur ever found in Africa. Do you think its special suit of spiky armor was a regional evolutionary trait? Were there scarier dinosaurs in Africa than in other parts of the world? Or was it just a fluke? When asked what such specialized armor was for, the team came up with a few possibilities. The first is sexual selection. It's just like the antlers of a buck. A male deer uses its antlers to fight off rival males, to defend itself from predators, and to impress potential romantic partners. The bigger the antlers, the better the chances of finding an [music] interested female. In the animal kingdom, size matters. Susannah said it would have been energetically expensive to grow these kinds of bony plates and it would have required a lot of energy to carry around the armor. The creature probably couldn't have moved very well, so although its armor kept it safe, it may have also hindered it. This is probably why later ankylosaurs had less cumbersome armor. Susannah believes Spicomellus evolved these huge spikes out of necessity [music] and then kept them to be used in mating displays. Sort of like, "Hey ladies, look how spiky I am. I can definitely protect you from scary things with teeth." So, while the spikes may have begun as defensive tools, they persisted because females started favoring males with larger spikes. The need to impress the ladies could have turned these dinosaurs into very slow-moving tanks. Impossible to eat, but very slow and probably exhausted from keeping up appearances.

[00:15:02]Organic molecules finally found in dinosaur bones. Do you want to see Jurassic Park for real? I do, too. But, scientists will never be able to clone dinosaurs if they can't find any of their original organic material. This has been a real problem for decades, with scientists saying fossilization always destroys all organic material because that's essentially what a fossil is, right? A fossil isn't an organism, it's a rock. Water dissolves the original bone one atom at a time, replacing each atom until all that remains is stone." But, scientists have just proved themselves wrong. They detected the remains of collagen in the fossil of an Edmontosaurus found in South Dakota. If their detection is accurate, it will be the first time organic material has been discovered inside a dinosaur fossil. If you're not sure what collagen is other than a word you hear in commercials for health products or going to the gym, let me fill you in. It's the main protein found in bone. The fact that some collagen could remain in a dinosaur bone from 66 million years ago is shocking. The scientists who made this incredible discovery come from the University of Liverpool. While they didn't 100% confirm the collagen, they did identify strong traces of it inside the sacrum of an Edmontosaurus. The sacrum is a part of the hip. Edmontosaurus was a rather hefty duck-billed dinosaur who lived right at the end of the dinosaur [music] age alongside the T-Rex in North America. It was big enough to be a T-Rex's entire dinner and probably was more than it would have liked. Using a combination of protein sequencing and mass spectrometry, scientists detected both collagen and hydroxyproline, which is an amino acid found inside of collagen. The experts said that finding these two things together makes them very confident that organic biomolecules can be present in some fossils. And all of this gibberish I just said means we are one step closer to a real Jurassic Park. The old assumption that organic material can't be found in fossils is now dead, which means the doors are wide open for scientists to start looking a little closer at fossils they already have in their collections. How many dinosaur bones still contain genetic material? It could be a lot more than anyone ever imagined. So, the next year is going to be very exciting for paleontologists.

[00:17:32]To be fair, there have been other incidents of organic structures found.

[00:17:37]For example, in 2005, paleontologist Mary Schweitzer found soft tissue structures inside a T-Rex fossil. Other studies have identified things like blood vessels in dinosaur specimens. However, this new Edmontosaurus analysis stands out for the sheer volume of proof. Multiple researchers used multiple independent testing methods, from chemical analysis to protein sequencing. All the tests lined up and confirmed the results, while double-confirming that there is no contamination. These previous cases of dino genetic material, while convincing, aren't as convincing as this one. The others could have been contaminated, but not this time. Collagen is the one thing that is extremely unlikely to be a contaminant, since someone would have to leak their own bone juice onto the fossil to replicate the results. The bigger picture is that if proteins can survive in fossils for this long, scientists may have a completely new way to study the dinosaur kingdom. Not only dinosaurs, but all extinct animals. Tiny molecular traces inside the collagen could reveal secrets of dinosaur evolution. They could reveal the relationships between dinosaurs and other types of animals. Things like dinosaur growth, dinosaur aging, dinosaur diseases. All of this information could potentially be unlocked. But, how did these molecules even survive for 66 million years? Was it a fluke or some special scientific process that no one knows about?

[00:19:08]Normally, proteins will break down over the ages, but there appears to be some mineral interaction happening within the bone that shields fragments of collagen from totally decaying. This could be the result of where the animal was buried, but no one really knows. I will say Edmontosaurus fossils are notorious for being exceptionally well preserved. Some specimens have been found with detailed skin impressions and with remnants of soft tissue. They are so often found intact that scientists nicknamed them dinosaur mummies. If the collagen is confirmed, I'm excited to see what paleontologists start doing next.

[00:19:46]Hopefully, this is the first step in acquiring some real dinosaur DNA and one day bringing these prehistoric beasts back to Earth. The Technicolor dinosaur.

[00:19:58]Scientists in China have discovered a Technicolor dinosaur fossil for the very first time and it's changed the game.

[00:20:05]For years, scientists thought they knew the story of the evolution of flight.

[00:20:10]They thought dinosaurs developed feathers, some learned to glide, and eventually this led to the evolution of birds. But not so fast. The strange fossil dug up in China is making scientists redraw that timeline. This dinosaur had four wings, very colorful feathers, and a really bizarre molting technique. It probably wasn't very good at flying, but that's okay. This little guy might be proof that some dinosaurs could have evolved flight long before the rise of birds. Not only that, but dinosaurs may have evolved the power of flight only to lose it later on in their evolution. Dinosaurs may have been huge flightless birds just like ostriches and penguins. Now it's time for the star of the show. Meet Anchiornis huxleyi, a small feathered dinosaur from 160 million years ago. Discovered in eastern China, this prehistoric beast was unusual from the get-go because of the long feathers on its arms and legs.

[00:21:09]Scientists say these feathers likely formed wings, giving the dinosaur one wing on each limb for a total of four.

[00:21:16]Sort of like modern sugar gliders, this would have given the animal the ability to glide. It's highly unlikely that it could have flown with this kind of setup, but it definitely could have glided for long distances. The truly amazing part is how well preserved the fossil is. Finding feathers in the fossil record at all is rare since feathers decay incredibly fast. For them to become fossilized, the animal has to get trapped in mud or some kind of volcanic explosion. It's even rarer to find fossilized feathers still showing their color patterns. It's so rare that Anchiornis huxleyi is now the first dinosaur to be rendered in its true original colors. It is nothing short of spectacular. Just look at this guy. It's got a black and white pattern on its wings, and look at the orange feathers on the back of its head. This was almost certainly for attracting mates since the colors would have stood out aggressively from its black and white body. It looks like something that wouldn't be that out of place flapping around in a jungle somewhere today. Richard Prum from Yale University, who was the co-author of the study, noted how Anchiornis' limbs are extremely similar to the Silver Spangled Hamburg chicken. That's a kind of chicken you don't find at the grocery store. It's one of those ornamental ones that people keep as pets. Scientists determined the colors of the feathers by analyzing the shape and density of melanosomes within the fossilized feathers. Melanosomes are very tiny.

[00:22:43]Different types produce different colors in modern bird feathers, so scientists just needed to compare them to find out what color the dino feathers were. The trouble isn't really with identifying which microscopic particles are present.

[00:22:56]It's finding fossils with those microscopic particles present at all.

[00:23:01]It's not something that typically happens, which makes this fossil very rare. As for how scientists figured out the bird wasn't able to fly and could only glide, it's because they identified its molting pattern. You probably know molting from snakes who slither out of their skin. When birds molt, it's a little different. Feathers only grow for a few weeks at a time before they become dead material. Over time, this material wears down and falls off, needing to be replaced by new feathers. Birds that can fly and flightless birds molt very differently. Birds who fly can't lose too many feathers at once or they won't be able to fly at all. So, they molt very symmetrically. Other birds like emus and ostriches who don't need to fly molt chaotically because it doesn't really matter. When scientists look closely at this dinosaur's fossilized feathers, they noticed that some didn't line up with the others. There was an obvious uneven growth pattern suggesting a chaotic molting session, which means this dino was probably flightless. And there you have it, my friends. The first feathered dinosaur completely colored in thanks to its fossilized nano pigments.

[00:24:08]Now, let's go see what's up in Brazil with a new dinosaur highway. The dinosaur highway revealed in Brazil. In northeastern Brazil, a giant dinosaur lay buried more than 25 ft beneath a construction site. When the construction workers cleared away the debris and realized they were looking at bones, they thought they'd stumbled upon Ice Age mammals.

[00:24:29]As it turned out, the remains belong to a new species of long-necked sauropod, one that grew an astonishing 65 ft long.

[00:24:37]But, that's just the warm-up. It's not the whole discovery. The dinosaur goes by a long and difficult-to-pronounce name, Daaz Az Sauros Tocantinensis.

[00:24:47]It lived roughly 120 million years ago with its closest known relative from much farther away. This dinosaur was found in Brazil's Maranhão state. Its closest extinct relative was found in Spain. This new guy is pretty special because its skeleton is so complete.

[00:25:05]Paleontologists have the tail vertebrae, the ribs, some foot bones, leg and arm bones, and even an entire femur. Guess how long the femur is. Ready? It's over 5 ft long, taller than a lot of people.

[00:25:19]Scientists know based on all of these fossilized bones that the dinosaur belonged to the sauropod group that includes the infamous titanosaur and all of their relatives. Garumbatitan morellensis was the closest known relative to our new prehistoric friend.

[00:25:33]Its fossilized remains were discovered all the way over in Spain, meaning these two cousins lived a world apart. Or did they? Researchers believe that roughly 140 million years ago, this Brazilian lineage packed its bags, left Europe, wandered through Africa, and finally settled in South America. If that sounds like a long swim, remember that Earth looked wildly different back then. The continents were still smushed together into the massive supercontinent known as Gondwana. This means our dinosaur friend could have mosied all the way from Spain to Brazil without ever getting its feet wet. This discovery is a big deal. It essentially proves the existence of a prehistoric superhighway, a massive terrestrial corridor that allowed giant dinosaurs to migrate across staggering distances. It finally explains why we find dinosaurs from the exact same family tree all over the globe, even if they evolved to look radically different. It does leave us with one burning question, though. How long does it take a 65-ft long hulking vegetarian monster to walk across the planet? Are we talking a few years of dedicated trekking, or did this global migration take millennia? It's a fascinating mystery, and one that we could solve if we could just find more fossils. But, in Brazil, that's easier said than done.

[00:26:51]Because Brazil is so tropical and dense with vegetation, paleontologists can't just pick a spot and start digging. In fact, if you mapped out the country's most important fossil discoveries, you would essentially be looking at a map of recent highways and quarries. Almost every major find happens entirely by accident during construction. So, if you happen to be in Brazil, keep your eyes peeled the next time a crew breaks ground in your neighborhood. You might just be sitting on top of the next great dinosaur resurrection. Which of today's discoveries impressed you the most? And as we look ahead at the rest of 2026, what are you hoping paleontologists dig up next? Let me know down below, and thank you so much for hanging out with me today. Remember to subscribe and come back soon for more awesome videos on everything prehistory. Bye.