{"id":176066,"date":"2025-11-12T03:40:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T03:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/176066\/"},"modified":"2025-11-12T03:40:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T03:40:11","slug":"dinosaur-eggshells-help-paleontologists-determine-age-of-fossil-bearing-rocks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/176066\/","title":{"rendered":"Dinosaur Eggshells Help Paleontologists Determine Age of Fossil-Bearing Rocks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scientists from Stellenbosch University and elsewhere have used advanced uranium-lead (U-Pb) dating and elemental mapping to measure trace amounts of uranium and lead inside the calcite of fossilized dinosaur eggshells found in the United States and Mongolia.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"An<\/a><\/p>\n

An artist\u2019s reconstruction of a newly-hatched troodontid-like dinosaur among fragments of its eggshell. Image credit: Eva Utsukiyouhei.<\/p>\n

Many fossil sites around the world are only coarsely dated.<\/p>\n

Without precise information on the geologic age of fossils, paleontologists struggle to understand how different species and ecosystems relate across time and space.<\/p>\n

Usually, they rely on dating minerals such as zircon or apatite found associated with fossils, but those minerals aren\u2019t always present.<\/p>\n

Attempts to date the fossils themselves, such as bones or teeth, have often produced uncertain results.<\/p>\n

Stellenbosch University\u2019s Dr. Ryan Tucker and colleagues took a different approach: they used advanced U-Pb dating and elemental mapping to measure trace amounts of uranium and lead housed inside the calcite of fossilized dinosaur eggshells.<\/p>\n

These isotopes function like a natural clock, enabling scientists to determine when the eggs were buried.<\/p>\n

Tests on dinosaur eggs from Utah in the United States and the Gobi Desert in Mongolia showed that the eggshells record ages with an accuracy of about 5% relative to precise volcanic-ash dates.<\/p>\n

In Mongolia, the researchers determined the first-ever direct age \u2014 around 75 million years old \u2014 for a historic locality preserving dinosaur eggs and nests.<\/p>\n

\u201cEggshell calcite is remarkably versatile,\u201d Dr. Tucker said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt gives us a new way to date fossil sites where volcanic layers are missing, a challenge that has limited paleontology for decades.\u201d<\/p>\n

By showing that dinosaur eggshells can reliably record the passage of geologic time, the study links biology and Earth science in a new way \u2014 offering researchers a powerful tool to date fossil sites around the globe.<\/p>\n

\u201cDirect dating of fossils is a paleontologist\u2019s dream,\u201d said Dr. Lindsay Zanno, a paleontologist at North Carolina State University and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.<\/p>\n

\u201cArmed with this new technique, we can unravel mysteries about dinosaur evolution that used to be insurmountable.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team\u2019s work<\/a> was published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.<\/p>\n

_____<\/p>\n

R.T. Tucker et al. 2025. U-Pb calcite age dating of fossil eggshell as an accurate deep time geochronometer. Commun Earth Environ 6, 872; doi: 10.1038\/s43247-025-02895-w<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists from Stellenbosch University and elsewhere have used advanced uranium-lead (U-Pb) dating and elemental mapping to measure trace…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[100084,8098,23429,67453,100085,18,4696,11395,19,17,15774,100086,133,100087,384,100088,2419],"class_list":{"0":"post-176066","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-calcite","9":"tag-cretaceous","10":"tag-dinosaur","11":"tag-egg","12":"tag-eggshell","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-fossil","15":"tag-gobi-desert","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-lead","19":"tag-mongolia","20":"tag-science","21":"tag-troodontidae","22":"tag-united-states","23":"tag-uranium","24":"tag-utah"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}