Mystery Photo

What in the world is it?

Don’t peek at the answer until you’ve given this a good try! Then, scroll down a bit and the truth will be revealed to you. What In the World Is It? Yes, it’s a fossil, but of what? This mystery photo is of a fossilized dinosaur embryo with fossilized skin. It is of a Sauropod, a type of plant-eating dinosaur. The discovery was made by Dr. Luis Chiappe and Dr. Lowell Dingus (American Museum of Natural History) and a team of researchers during an expedition in November 1997 to Patagonia, Argentina, in South America. The team found the first-ever fossil of its kind in a dinosaur nesting site that contained thousands of dinosaur eggs – including the one seen here that contained an unhatched dinosaur embryo with patches of delicate fossilized skin. This fossil provided researchers with the first glimpse of the soft tissue that covers baby dinosaurs. Credit: ( © 1998 Luis Chiappe, American Museum of Natural History) Back