Friday, December 04, 2015

The Giving of December. Hypselosaurus

What information can be garnered about Hypselosaurus is that it was a medium sized titanosaur that lived in what is now Western Europe at the end of the Cretaceous period.‭ ‬Unfortunately it is very difficult to go beyond this because of the incomplete nature of recovered specimens‭ (‬despite the popular image presented in fiction,‭ ‬complete fossil skeletons of prehistoric animals are the exceptions and not the rule‭)‬.
       One further area of study regarding Hypselosaurus are eggs that have been attributed to this dinosaur.‭ ‬These eggs are roughly spherical and thirty centimetres across,‭ ‬but‭ ‬one‭ ‬area of puzzlement is that some have much thinner shells than others.‭ ‬Explanations for this difference have suggested that the eggs are not all of the same species,‭ ‬or that the dinosaur that laid them had a dietary deficiency that meant there was less calcium and other nutrients to use in eggshell production.‭ ‬Other theories however have propositioned that the thinner shelled eggs were laid by younger individuals,‭ ‬while the thicker shelled eggs were laid by older Hypselosaurus.

No comments: