65 Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Eggs Found in India

Geologists have found a cluster of fossilized dinosaur eggs, said to be about 65million years old.

The discovery in a village in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu could help to unravel the mystery of how dinosaurs became extinct.

'We found layer upon layer of spherical eggs and body parts of dinosaur and each cluster contained eight eggs,' M. Ramkumar, a geologist at Periyar University who led a survey team, said.

The eggs, about five to eight inches in diameter and lying in sandy nests about four feet wide, were discovered during a study funded by Indian and German scientific institutions.

The clusters were under ash from volcanic eruptions on the Deccan plateau, which geologists said could have caused the dinosaurs to become extinct.

The nesting site was found along the banks and bottom of streams in the Cauvery river basin, containing clusters of fossilized eggs, dung and bone remains of dinosaurs.

'Occurrences of unhatched eggs in large numbers at different stratigraphic levels indicate that the dinosaurs kept returning to the same site for nesting,' Mr Anbarasu, another survey team member, told The Hindu newspaper.

The first discovery of dinosaur egg shells was made in France in 1859. Since then thousands of eggs have been found at around 200 sites around the world, many of them in Asia.

The researchers have requested local officials to cordon off the site since a similar discovery in northern India led to a plunder of the fossils.