A fossil egg found by a Chinese farmer has turned out to have a rare surprise inside: A baby turtle nearly ready to hatch. And that’s allowed scientists to make a unique and important connection, a new study reports.
“This is actually the first time that [fossil] turtle eggs or a nest really could be attributed to a particular turtle,” said Darla Zelenitsky, a co-author of the study and an associate professor of paleontology at the University of Calgary.
The turtle lived among dinosaurs — such as long-necked, plant-eating sauropods, duck-billed hadrosaurs and large meat eaters, similar to tyrannosaurs — during the Cretaceous period. It went extinct with them.
“It was a giant turtle for the time,” said Zelenitsky.
She estimates the female that laid the egg was more than 1.6 metres long — roughly as long as an average woman is tall, and longer than a giant Galapagos tortoise, although it had a flatter, less domed shell.
A baby nanhsiungchelyid turtle, which lived during the age of dinosaurs, hatches from its egg in this artist’s impression. (Masato Hattori)
Like the Galapagos tortoise, it lived entirely on land. Nanhsiungchelyids lived in arid desert environments, but the egg was found near the shores of an ancient river.
“During the rainy season, these river systems may have overflowed and buried the eggs that were on the floodplain, potentially preserving them as fossils,” said Zelenitsky.
The Henan region of China where it was found is also known for fossil dinosaur eggs, she said.
The fossil egg was found in 2018 by a farmer in China’s Henan province. (Yuzheng Ke)
The estimated size of the embryo’s mother is based on the known relationship between the size of a turtle’s body and its eggs. The fossil is roughly the size and shape of a tennis ball — perfectly spherical — with a shell as thick as that of a much bigger ostrich egg.
“I was thinking, ‘How did this little turtle hatch out of this egg, with it being so thick?'” Zelenitsky recalled. “They must have been doing a lot of flexing and extending … to work their way out.”
The embryo was extremely well preserved, allowing researchers to X-ray it with a CT scanner and reconstruct its skeleton in 3D. They concluded it was a nanhsiungchelyid after comparing it to other ancient and modern turtles.
Egg helps identify nests
By identifying that egg, which was found by itself, the researchers were also able to identify entire nests of identical turtle eggs found elsewhere. It showed that nanhsiungchelyids normally laid 15 to 30 eggs at a time.
This artist’s impression shows baby nanhsiungchelyid turtles hatching from their eggs. The fossil with the embryo allowed researchers to identify identical eggs in other nests, showing that they typically were laid in clutches of 15 to 30. (Masato Hattori)
The farmer who originally found the egg in 2018 donated it to a museum.
The lead author of the study, Yuzheng Ke, a graduate student at the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan, contacted Zelenitsky and asked her to participate because she previously had done research on dinosaur eggs and even a pregnant turtle.
Zelenitsky said she jumped at the chance: “I was excited about it the entire time.”
The study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
Daniel Lawver, a researcher at Stony Brook University’s School of Medicine in New York who was not involved in the study, has been doing similar, not-yet-published research on a different turtle egg and embryo.
He was pleasantly surprised by the study, he said, as a turtle with an identifiable embryo inside is a “very, very rare” find and this one is a “really cool specimen.”
That’s because most turtles have thin eggshells composed of a mineral called aragonite that’s unstable on the Earth’s surface. During fossilization, it’s converted to another mineral that makes them hard to identify, Lawver said. And often, they’re fossilized before the embryo has developed, resulting in a fossil eggshell filled with rock.
This is the fossil of an adult nanhsiungchelyid turtle from Alberta. Adult nanhsiungchelyid were very large. The one that laid the egg was estimated to be 1.6 metres long. (Royal Tyrell Museum)
Jordan Mallon, a paleontologist at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa who has studied nanhsiungchelyid fossils from North America, including Alberta, agrees with the identification of the embryo. He was also not involved with this research.
The thick, water-retaining eggshells add to evidence that the turtles were fully land-dwelling, he said, something that has been debated.
The techniques used in the study could later be used to examine older turtle embryos and uncover long-standing puzzles about turtle evolution, like how their shells evolved, said Mallon.
“I think the authors of this paper are sort of leading the way.”
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
