More than 100 dinosaur eggs were found in a nest about 193 million years old. Scientists also revealed a new theory about dinosaurs from the discovery.
Not only eggs, the site is located in Patagonia, Argentina, also found fossils of young and adult dinosaur skeletons. They are the ancestors of the next generation of dinosaurs, namely herbivores called sauropods.
The eggs were found in groups of between eight and thirty. It was concluded that the nests were used together. These patterns indicate that these early dinosaurs lived socially in groups.
"I went to this site to find at least one dinosaur skeleton. In the end we found 80 skeletons and more than 100 eggs, some with embryos in them," said Diego Pol, a researcher at the Egidio Feruglio museum of paleontology.
Prior to this discovery, researchers thought limited group life took place in dinosaurs of much later generations in the late Jurassic and early Cretaceous periods. With these new findings, there is evidence that social group living had occurred about 40 million years earlier.
Argentine paleontologists had already discovered the site in the late 1970s. Further research was then conducted in which it was concluded that the size of the excavated Musaurus was similar to a modern hippopotamus. But his son is the size of a human palm.
By analyzing the size and type of the trenches, the researchers stated that they were buried nearby. "These dinosaurs live together and seem to be dying from the drought," Pol said.
"This fits the pattern that the group lived together for several years and was close to each other during daily activities," he added.