A 68 million year old fossil egg from Antarctica changes how we view ancient marine reptiles
A 68-million-year-old soft-shelled fossil egg, nicknamed 'The Thing,' was discovered in Antarctica, challenging long-held assumptions about reptile evolution. Its size suggests it belonged to a giant mosasaur, and its structure resembles modern sea snake eggs.
Why it matters
This discovery significantly reshapes scientific understanding of how ancient marine reptiles reproduced and the evolutionary timeline of eggshell development, suggesting soft shells may have been ancestral.
When the fossil was first spotted on Seymour Island in 2011, no one knew what it was. The structure was flattened and paper-thin, unlike the rigid shells typically preserved in the fossil record. For years, it resisted classification.
Nearly a decade later, detailed analysis revealed it was a soft shelled egg, a type rarely preserved and almost never found at this scale. The research team, led by Lucas Legendre of the University of Texas at Austin and including co-author Julia Clarke, published their findings in Nature on June 17, 2020, naming it Antarcticoolithus bradyi . Scientists nicknamed it “The Thing.”
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