Initially bewildered by it, they nicknamed it “The Thing,” after the name of a science-fiction film. Scientists from the University of Chile and the country’s Museum of Natural History found the fossil in 2011. Mosasaurs and plesiosaurs went extinct at the same time as the dinosaurs after an asteroid struck Earth 66 million years ago. Among the candidates are species of mosasaurs reaching 50 feet (15 meters) long and plesiosaurs reaching 33 feet (10 meters) long, Legendre said. The egg had no embryonic remains and the mother’s skeleton was not found to identify what animal laid it. “We suspect these large reptiles had the same reproductive strategy as viviparous lizards and snakes, which lay eggs with a very thin shell that hatch immediately after being laid,” Legendre said. The fossil challenges the notion that these animals did not lay eggs and were fully viviparous, giving birth to live young.
The only creatures in Antarctica at that time large enough to lay such an egg were seagoing reptiles: the marine lizards called mosasaurs and the long-necked plesiosaurs. Its eggshell is very thin and poorly mineralized, like in the eggs of lizard and snakes.”
One side is flattened, suggesting this is where it came in contact with the seafloor. “It looks a bit like a deflated football: elongated, collapsed, with many creases and folds on its surface.
A soft-shell fossil egg of a marine reptile found in Antarctica.
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