OLogy Cards > Oviraptorid Embryo

An "Eggs-traordinary" Discovery
In 1993, Mark Norell discovered a fossilized egg containing a curled-up oviraptorid embryo. These tiny bones helped explain a discovery from over 70 years ago. In the 1920s, Roy Chapman Andrews and his team had found a fossil of an adult Oviraptor on a nest of eggs. Andrews believed that the eggs belonged to Protoceratops, a common Cretaceous Gobi dinosaur. His theory was that the Oviraptor was raiding a nest of Protoceratops eggs. Because Dr. Norell's 1993 egg matched the eggs found in the 1920s, scientists now think that the Oviraptor found by Dr. Andrews was actually protecting its own nest of eggs.