Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, I'm Lauren vogel Bomb and this is another
Speaker 1: classic episode from our archive. Every time a new cash
Speaker 1: of the remains of incredible prehistoric animals crops up, it's
Speaker 1: cause for celebration. In this episode, we dig into the
Speaker 1: amazing find of hundreds of parasaur eggs. Hey there, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren vogel Bomb. Here. Flight is a hard thing to master.
Speaker 1: The vast majority of vertebrates can walk, swim, or do both,
Speaker 1: but in the history of life on this planet, only
Speaker 1: three groups of backboned animals have ever evolved the ability
Speaker 1: to fly. Early bats acquired the skill roughly fifty two
Speaker 1: million years ago. Feathered dinosaurs began to experiment with flight
Speaker 1: back in the Jurassic period. Incidentally, you probably know of
Speaker 1: their descendants today as birds. Yet while birds and bats
Speaker 1: are still around, the animals that first pioneered vertebrate flight
Speaker 1: are long gone. That's because hundred and twenty eight million
Speaker 1: years ago, a flying plade of reptiles evolved. These were
Speaker 1: the pterosaurs. Though Hollywood often mislabels them as dinosaurs, they
Speaker 1: actually represented a separate, contemporaneous group for more than a
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty million years, dinosaurs and pterosaurs lived side
Speaker 1: by side. It was an exciting time to be an aeronaut.
Speaker 1: During their reign, the pterosaurs diversified like crazy. Some species
Speaker 1: would be comparable to sparrows in size. Others had wingspans
Speaker 1: of thirty six feet that's eleven meters or more, making
Speaker 1: them the largest flying animals of all time. Then, sixty
Speaker 1: six million years ago, the pterosaurs succumbed to the same
Speaker 1: mass extinction that wiped out all non avian dinosaurs. In
Speaker 1: four Italian naturalist Cosmo Collini became the first person to
Speaker 1: write a formal scientific description of a pterosaur skeleton. At
Speaker 1: the time, he thought this strange looking animal was some
Speaker 1: kind of deep sea creature. But thanks to hard working paleontologists,
Speaker 1: we've learned a great deal about these winged wonders. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: there are still some large gaps in our knowledge. One
Speaker 1: big mystery involves the early lives of young pterosaurs. The
Speaker 1: first confirmed dinosaur and nest was unearthed in nineteen twenty three.
Speaker 1: Since then, fossil hunters have excavated thousands of dino eggs
Speaker 1: sites all over the world. Yet terrasaur eggs are considerably rarer.
Speaker 1: None whatsoever were discovered until two thousand four, when two
Speaker 1: appeared in China and a third showed up in Argentina.
Speaker 1: In twenty eleven, a fourth egg was found next to
Speaker 1: the skeleton of its presumed mother, an adult animal from
Speaker 1: the genus Darwin a terrace. Three years later and another
Speaker 1: Argentinian egg emerged, along with five additional Chinese specimens. So
Speaker 1: until very recently, the global scientific community hadn't found enough
Speaker 1: terosaur eggs to fill as standard egg carton, but paleontologists
Speaker 1: just hit the motherload. In the December twenty seventeen issue
Speaker 1: of the journal Science, a Chinese research team announced the
Speaker 1: discovery of a new site in China's Globi Desert containing
Speaker 1: at least two hundred and fifteen pterosaur eggs. Sixteen preserved
Speaker 1: embryos were found there as well, along with some skeletons
Speaker 1: from hatchling, juvenile and adult pterosaurs. These eggs are roughly
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty million years old and were laid
Speaker 1: by Hamateus tiensnsis a crusted toothy species with an eleven
Speaker 1: foot wingspan that's about three point three meters. Terrasaur experts
Speaker 1: are still trying to assess where it belongs on the
Speaker 1: family tree. One such authority is paleontologist David Hohne, who
Speaker 1: told us in an email that Hamateus' closest relatives were
Speaker 1: most likely various groups of terrasaurs known for being ocean
Speaker 1: going or at least coastal foragers. In terms of lifestyle,
Speaker 1: he says these animals would have behaved like today's gulls
Speaker 1: and albatrosses. The newfound bounty of eggs was recovered by
Speaker 1: a team representing the Beijing based Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Speaker 1: Most of the shelled treasures were embedded in a sandstone
Speaker 1: block that may be hiding even more clutches that have
Speaker 1: yet to be revealed. One reason why this find is
Speaker 1: so spectacular has to do with the fragility of terrasaur eggshells.
Speaker 1: Like modern chickens, extinct dinosaurs laid hard shelled eggs. Contrast
Speaker 1: these with the eggs of present day snakes, whose shells
Speaker 1: are thin, soft, pliable, and have the xture of old parchment.
Speaker 1: Terrasaur eggs resembled the ladder, a fact confirmed by previous discoveries.
Speaker 1: Because their shells were so soft, these rare eggs tend
Speaker 1: to get squitched flat by the forces of fossilization, Yet
Speaker 1: the ones that this new Chinese site were preserved in
Speaker 1: three dimensions. The discoveries implications are still open to debate.
Speaker 1: Chinese Academy of Sciences paleontologist Shallon Wang was the lead
Speaker 1: author of the paper in the journal Science which announced
Speaker 1: this big find. In it, he and his co authors
Speaker 1: suggest the site may have a lot to say about
Speaker 1: terrasaur parenting. As Whang and his colleagues point out, some
Speaker 1: of the embryo's lack teeth and their wingbones seem underdeveloped.
Speaker 1: The paleontologists think this could mean that newly hatched Hamma
Speaker 1: terrists could neither fly nor eat solid food. Thus they
Speaker 1: would have had to depend on their parents for protection
Speaker 1: and sustenance. Other scientists have disagreed with that conclusion. In
Speaker 1: present day reptiles, teeth are one of the last things
Speaker 1: embryos developed, so while these developing terosaurs were toothless, they
Speaker 1: might still have grown some choppers before had ching. Also,
Speaker 1: according to Michael Habib, a pterosaur specialist at the University
Speaker 1: of California, the fetal wings appeared quite robust, meaning the
Speaker 1: newborns might have been able to start flying right away.
Speaker 1: A point of consensus among paleontologists, though, is that pterosaurs
Speaker 1: probably didn't brood their eggs like present day birds. For
Speaker 1: one thing, as Homee told us, the extinct reptiles simply
Speaker 1: could not sit like birds due to the anatomical differences. Also,
Speaker 1: while terrasaurs were coated with fuzzy stuff, they lacked feathers,
Speaker 1: which roosting avians used to keep their clutches nice and warm.
Speaker 1: Another leading expert in modern terrasaur science one S Christopher
Speaker 1: Bennett of Fort Hayes State University in Kansas, agrees. He
Speaker 1: said via email, there's no evidence and no reason to
Speaker 1: think that terosaurs incubated their eggs. Rather, they probably deposited
Speaker 1: them in sands, soils, or vegetable matter, like modern reptiles.
Speaker 1: In the past, Bennett has championed the idea that at
Speaker 1: least some terrasaurs formed nesting groups near environments suitable for
Speaker 1: the hatchlings to feed and grow safely. He feels the
Speaker 1: new Hemiates site may lend some credence to that notion,
Speaker 1: a sentiment shared by Weighing and his co authors, but
Speaker 1: it added careful excavation of terrasaur egg deposits could certainly
Speaker 1: provide evidence as to whether eggs were buried and whether
Speaker 1: terrasaurs reused desting sites year after year. Today's episode was
Speaker 1: written by Mark Mancini and produced by Tristan McNeil and
Speaker 1: Tyler Playing. For more on this and lots of other
Speaker 1: terrorific topics, visit housetuffworks dot com. Brain Stuff is production
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