We scanned a real dinosaur egg – what did we find?

Simon Edward • May 27, 2024

At Stump Cross Caverns, we're mad about geology. Learn about the time we got a dinosaur egg scanned.

Did you know there are dinosaur eggs with preserved embryos inside? You can find many examples at natural history museums – but you can also buy them from fossil collectors and online stores.

Of course, you can't tell just by looking whether the egg contains an embryo. For that, you need to get it scanned.

Here at Stump Cross Caverns, we're mad about fossils and the history of our landscape. So, we couldn't resist picking up a dinosaur egg and taking it to be scanned.

The scanning process

We took our egg to Neo Jurassica, a group of professional palaeontologists based at the Yorkshire Natural History Museum in Sheffield. They're passionate about excavation, fossils and conservation – and they've got the tools to tell us more about our egg.

The egg gets scanned by a process called Micro CT (written as μCT). This is a bit like a medical CT scan – it shows you digital representations of the internal and external features of an object. But as the name suggests, it's on a smaller scale.

Our fossil-scanner for the day put the egg on a revolving disc called a "manipulator". The X-ray then took thousands of projects which were converted into a digital model. This model could then be rotated, enlarged and explored on the computer screen.

What did we find?

Sadly, our dinosaur egg didn't contain a preserved embryo. But we did learn a lot about the dinosaur it probably came from – a duck-billed beast called a hadrosaur.

Hadrosaur – from the Greek hadrós, stout, and saúra, lizard – are from the genus Maiasaura. We know about them from fossils dating from the Late Cretaceous Period – that's between about 100 million and 65.5 million years ago.

It's thought that hadrosaurs had big clutches of eggs and that the mothers provided good parental care. In fact, Maiasasura means "good mother lizard"!

While we were disappointed that we weren't the proud owner of a dinosaur embryo, it was fascinating to take part in the Micro CT process and to learn about the hadrosaur. And we have another egg in our possession that may be scanned at a later date…

Dinosaurs in Yorkshire

North Yorkshire is renowned for its dinosaur footprints. Literally thousands of tracks have been found all over the region.

Burniston Bay, a 10-minute drive north of Scarborough, is a treasure trove of dinosaur fossils. As recently as February 2023, a three-toed fossilised footprint was found in the area.

This fossil is believed to be from a large theropod. This was doubly exciting as the theropod was a predator, and it's far more common to find the fossils of prey than of predators.

It's now in safe keeping at Scarborough Museum and Galleries, protected from the wind, rain and other elements that could eventually have eroded it away.

Are you goo-goo about geology? Book a trip to Stump Cross Caverns today.

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