Titanosaurs

In News

• Recently, Indian Researchers have found 92 nests and 256 fossilised eggs belonging to Titanosaurs in Central India.
  • Titanosaurs are the largest dinosaurs to have ever lived.

About the Study

• The researchers identified six different egg-species (oospecies), suggesting a higher diversity of titanosaurs than is represented by skeletal remains from this region. 
• Based on the layout of the nests, the team inferred that these dinosaurs buried their eggs in shallow pits like modern-day crocodiles.
• A rare case of an “egg-in-egg,” indicates that titanosaur sauropods had a reproductive physiology that parallels that of birds and possibly laid their eggs in a sequential manner as seen in modern birds. 
• The presence of many nests in the same area suggests these dinosaurs exhibited colonial nesting behavior like many modern birds. 
• The insights gleaned from this study contribute significantly to paleontologists’ understanding of how dinosaurs lived and evolved.

Fossils in Narmada Valley

• The first dinosaur-related discovery was reported in 1828 when Captain William Henry Sleeman found dinosaur bones near Jabalpur.
• The Lameta Formation, located in the Narmada Valley of central India, is well-known for fossils of dinosaur skeletons and eggs of the Late Cretaceous Period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago.
• Together with the previously found dinosaur nests in eastern MP’s Jabalpur, located in the upper Narmada Valley, and Gujarat’s Balasinor, situated in the west, it is one of the largest dinosaur hatcheries in the world.

Source: IE