Jurassic Park is one step closer!
An ostrich egg takes 42 days (wow, for a bird with an eye bigger than its brain) and a more complex creature like a human, takes 42 weeks. An elephant takes even longer, a full 2 years inside its mommy before it's viable.
So, how long for a dinosaur?
Between 3 and 6 months, depending on the dino.
The science guys at Florida State used embryonic dental records - I didn't even realise they'd have embryonic dental records back then - to determine how long gestation was.
The biggest question was - crocodile/lizard or bird gestation?
Crocs and lizards take a while and birds pop out of the eggshell in no time at all, relatively speaking.
Quote: (Yeah, not figured out how to do the quote thing yet, gimme chance...)
The two types of dinosaur embryos researchers examined were those from Protoceratops -- a sheep-sized dinosaur found in the Mongolian Gobi Desert whose eggs were quite small (194 grams) -- and Hypacrosaurus, an enormous duck-billed dinosaur found in Alberta, Canada with eggs weighing more than 4 kilograms.
Quote:
Their results showed nearly three months for the tiny Protoceratops embryos and six months for those from the giant Hypacrosaurus.
So now you know. A big dino could take 6 months to hatch. That's a long time to keep it incubated and protected. I wonder if the parents buried the eggs like turtles do, or kept an eye on them, like hens?
This is where I found the info - https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170102155018.htm
Just found the 'Today I Learned' tag!
pixabay pictures