Originals in the travelling exhibition "Dinosaur Eggs" of Charlie and Florence Magovern.
Vast sauropod nesting grounds (with their typical spherical shapes and eggs the size of small soccer footballs) have been found recently in the Argentinean Patagonia. This double scene is inspired by the recent research of Luis Chiappe's team. The most intriguing aspect of the new research is that they have also discovered embryos and soft tissue with the eggs, showing for the first time the skin of a sauropod dinosaur about to be born. Skin of embryos has been the source of intense speculation: Were sauropods feathered or hairy too considering their probable high metabolism? Their rate of growth was probably unparalleled in the animal world (from a one to two kilograms hatchling to a probably fully grown 7 tons in seven years). This discovery points towards a scaly skin, although being embryos we could argue for a later development of insulatory coverage. The almost microscopic pattern of the skin shows very small non-overlapping mosaic scales surrounding slightly bigger ones: A perfect blueprint of what the adult titanosaur skin was going to be. As we know now titanosaurs are (among other things) famous for their armoured skin with rather large scutes surrounded by many small, pebbly, non-overlapping scales. The embryos show that incipient pattern too. A double row of scutes lined the whole back (most probably also neck and tail) and the rest of bigger scutes were scattered all over the trunk, hip and shoulders. Because intriguing smaller scutes have been found together with titanosaur remains from Morocco, I have also reconstructed the pattern extending well over the neck and tail. The armour evolved in different kinds of titanosaurs to sometimes extravagant excesses.
