Dinosaur eggs found in Chechnya

Scientists in Chechnya say they have discovered a cache of fossilized dinosaur eggs in a mountainous area south of the republic. 

Dinosaur eggs found in the village of Hima, in the Sharoysky district of Chechnya [Credit: RFERL]

A team of geographers made the sensational discovery on April 9 during an expedition to study two previously uncharted waterfalls. 

"There are boulders on the slopes of the mountain, and among them we noticed smooth globes," Said-Magomed Dzhabrailov, a geographer at the Chechen State University, told RFE/RL. "We got closer and saw that they didn't look like stones. We concluded that they were dinosaur eggs, because the shells, the whites and the yolks were clearly visible. Their diameter ranges between 63 centimeters and one meter." 

The 40 or so eggs are believed to date back roughly 60 million years, toward the end of the dinosaurs' reign on Earth. 

A group of paleontologist has been sent from Moscow to study samples and conduct radiocarbon dating tests. 

But the Chechen scientists are "90 percent" confident they have found prehistoric eggs, which they think were laid by plant-eating dinosaurs.  

Source: Radio Free Europe Radio Library [April 16, 2012]