9-Year-Old Finds 66-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Egg On Riverbank In South China

A nine-year-old boy with a love for science who was playing on the banks of the Dong River in South China’s Guangdong province discovered a dinosaur's egg while looking for a rock to crack open some walnuts. And staff members of the local museum then dug up more dinosaur eggs from the same area. This nest of dinosaur eggs is believed to be 66 million years old.

Zhang Yangzhe’s mother Li Xiaofang relayed the discovery to the museum staff, saying the boy was looking for something to crack open walnuts and came across the "special rock." He called his mother when he saw circles on the rock.

Zhang was quoted by Heyuan Radio and Television Station as saying, “I thought it was a cement circle at first. Later, I asked my mom to look at it and thought that the shell was like a dinosaur egg.”

The boy said he recognized the pattern after seeing similar fossilized eggs at the museum. “I have learned this knowledge in the books and in the cultural corridor of the school. I have seen it in museums, different dinosaur eggs have different shapes,” he explained. Li said Zhang loves science and has read a number of books about dinosaurs.

Experts from the Heyuan Dinosaur Museum confirmed that the find were indeed fossiled dinosaur eggs. They also carried out further excacations at the site. Reports saty the fossilized eggs were 3.5 inches in diameter. Huang Ding, the former director of Heyuan Dinosaur Museum, said the fossils are believed to be from the late Cretaceous period.

Dinosaur fossils have been found in most of the continents. These gigantic thunder lizards roamed the Earth thousands of millions of years ago, and scientists are still trying to find the exact reason why they went extinct -- either due to a meteorite crash or climate change.

Recently a giant dinosaur bone weighing about 500 kg was dug up in France.