Millions of years ago dinosaurs roamed the Earth, and they have been the focus of fascination ever since we humans lagged behind them a couple of millennia later.
Now, in a discovery befitting of Jumanji, a nest of perfectly preserved dinosaur eggs has been discovered under a construction site in China.
Archaeologists have said the eggs are 130 million years old.
The construction workers who stumbled across the former life form, frozen in time, got an unexpected Christmas gift, when they uncovered the eggs on Christmas day in the city of Ganzhou.
The location is particularly special, fondly known to locals and across China as the ‘hometown of dinosaurs’.
The giant eggs were discovered on December 25 in Ganzhou’s Dayu County under the construction site of a middle school, according to China News.
The workers reportedly came across a a cluster of ‘oval-shaped stones’ in earth when they were breaking the ground with explosives, to make way for the centre of learning.
Almost-ironically, to make way for the school they might just have destroyed some truly fascinating pieces of history more exciting than anything you could find in a history textbook.
Luckily, the explosives were halted after the hawk-eyed workers on site spotted what they believed to be ‘black debris’ measuring 2mm thick and lodged between the unusual oval rocks.
They immediately halted the explosives which were set to destroy the land and called the police who closed off the entire site for safety.
Good shout, as it turns out, because the ‘black debris’ were the fossilised egg shells, and the oval stones – as the construction workers had rightly guessed – were fossilised dinosaur eggs.
The eggs are from the Cretaceous period, the last period of the age of dinosaurs, reported China News.
The egg-cellent hoards of history is now in the hands of experts from the Dayu County Museum, where the eggs will be held for further testing.
While the discovery may seem unique to us in Britain where the only dinosaurs you’ll find are confined in the House of Lords, actually, the people of Ganzhou are used to seeing artefacts from the past.
The city and its surrounding areas are known for a rich deposit of dinosaur eggs, especially those of Oviraptors, which were small, feathered dinosaurs native to modern Mongolia and Mainland China.
They were thought to walk on two legs and boasted parrot-like beaks. Amazingly, they shared another characteristic with modern birds, brooding clutches of eggs at a temperature similar to chickens.
In fact, the area is so associated with old eggs, six oviraptorosaurian dinosaurs have been named after Ganzhou, including the Ganzhousaurus, or Ganzhou Lizard.
Scientists have endeavoured to discover more about the grisly T-Rex and the Diplodocus even before they became popularised by Jeff Goldblum, the Jurassic Park franchise and the greatest children’s animated series ever made, The Land Before Time.
You can catch up with the latest in the Jurassic World in the new trailer below:
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Hopefully this incredible discovery will teach us all a little more about these majestic ancient beasts…
And inspire a Jumanji vs Jurassic World spin-off?
A former emo kid who talks too much about 8Chan meme culture, the Kardashian Klan, and how her smartphone is probably killing her. Francesca is a Cardiff University Journalism Masters grad who has done words for BBC, ELLE, The Debrief, DAZED, an art magazine you’ve never heard of and a feminist zine which never went to print.