THE EGG & EMBRYO EXHIBITION GUIDE

Introduction
The specimens and photographs in this exhibition are largely the work of Terry Manning of Leicester, a professional fossil technician of twenty years experience. He has been working on this project for several years, and has had to develop new techniques to identify those fossil eggs which are most likely to contain embryonic remains. Some of these rare fossils show extraordinary detail of the embryonic soft tissues. This is the first time that these spectacular fossils have been exhibited anywhere in the World. They provide a mass of new information for scientists, and as Dr Dale Russell, a World-famous Canadian dinosaur expert has said ' they are the most wonderful dinosaurian remains that I have had the privilege of viewing during my professional life.' The fossil eggs show stages of dinosaur embryos from the period when only soft tissues (such as cartilage) are present, to the almost-hatched stage where bone and skin are preserved. Some eggs show macabre evidence that insects have gained access to unhatched eggs to eat the contents. The eggs forming the core of the Exhibition are from the Cretaceous period of China (PRC).

There are four types of fossil egg with embryos in the exhibition:
  • 1)Therizinosaur (the more popular name, segnosaur is used on the Exhibition labels), a long-necked bipedal, possible herbivore that stood about 3 meters high and maybe was 4 meters long. These eggs are oval in shape and about 90 mm long. 
  • 2)Perhaps ankylosaur, a quadrupedal, short-necked, armoured herbivore that stood 2.5 meters high and was up to 10 meters long when adult. These eggs are cylindrical and about 200 mm long. 
  • 3)An as yet unidentified dinosaur whose eggs are cylindrical and at least half a meter long. 
  • 4)Tortoise. Previously the earliest fossil tortoise of this modern type was about 40 million years old. This find pushes their history back at least another 35 million years. These eggs are spherical and 40 mm in diameter.