Research Team and CMNH Experts Unearth Major Discovery

A natural history expert and museum executive, Joel A. Bartsch has a career spanning 40 years in this field. For his contributions, Joel Bartsch has been recognized by the Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CMNH) which gave him the 2004 Carnegie Medal Recipient for Outstanding Contributions in the Field of Mineralogy.

The CMNH announced in a press release that a team of researchers, including experts from the CMNH, unearthed a discovery of major significance. Called the rarest of rare discoveries, the team found a dinosaur preserved on a nest of eggs containing embryos.

The fossils belong to a group of bird-like theropod dinosaurs that are classified as oviraptorosaur. These dinosaur birds existed during the third part of the Mesozoic Era (Dinosaur Age), or the Cretaceous Era, which lasted from between 145 to 66 million years ago.

The researchers discovered an incomplete large, adult skeleton crouched in a brood-like position over at least 24 eggs. Seven of the eggs contain unhatched embryos or partial skeletons. The way the researchers found the dinosaur and the eggs gives them a few bits of information. For one, it tells them that the dinosaur died in the process of incubating eggs, and this was surmised after using oxygen isotope tests that indicated the eggs had a high temperature, which would correlate with eggs being incubated. Also, because the eggs seemed to contain both embryos and skeletons, it indicates the eggs hatched at different times.