The largest dinosaurs that ever lived were able to reproduce at high latitudes — or regions far from the equator — and came up with a clever strategy to keep their eggs warm, a study of a trove of titanosaur eggs unearthed in Argentina has revealed.
Most titanosaur eggs and eggshells, like those of other dinosaurs, have been found in lower-latitude regions closer to the equator, where warmer temperatures would have made incubating the eggs easier.
Scientists think these long-necked, small-brained, plant-eating giants — part of a group known as sauropods — lived in herds and may have migrated over long distances, nesting in the same place for millennia.
“We know their bones have turned up in places as far south as Antarctica and southern Argentina, and as far north as Mongolia and Texas,” said Darla Zelenitsky, a paleontologist and associate professor at the University of Calgary in Alberta. Zelenitsky is a senior author of the new research, which published Tuesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science.
“They clearly spent time in higher latitude areas, but until now it wasn’t known whether they were also nesting there,” Zelenitsky added.
