Eggshells

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Time: Cretaceous

Region: USA, China, Mongolia, Argentina, France

Formation: Multiple localities across several countries

Coloration Data

In Wiemann et al. (2015), the eggshell coloration of the oviraptorid Heyuannia huangi was analyzed by detecting molecular pigment biomarkers — protoporphyrin and biliverdin. The authors suggest that the eggs of Heyuannia were likely olive-green (if uniformly colored) or speckled with brown spots on a blue-green ground (if maculated). Subsequently, Wiemann et al. (2018) conducted a broad-scale survey of fossil and extant eggshells spanning from the Cretaceous to the present day. Mesozoic taxa analyzed included Maiasaura peeblesorum, Deinonychus antirrhopus, and an indeterminate troodontid from the USA; an enantiornithine bird, a microtroodontid, and a troodontid from Mongolia; a saltasaurid from Argentina; a titanosaur from France; and Heyuannia huangi from China. The study demonstrated that all sampled Cretaceous ornithischian and sauropod eggshells lacked pigments (and were thus unpigmented/white). In contrast, eggshells across the sampled Cretaceous eumaniraptorans were pigmented. The sole exception among the maniraptorans was the North American troodontid, in which pigments were absent — a condition interpreted by the authors as a secondary evolutionary loss of eggshell pigmentation.

Method: High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC), Electrospray Ionization Quadrupole Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry (ESI-Q-TOF-MS), and high-resolution Raman spectroscopy.

Publications

• Arindam Roy, Michael Pittman, Evan T. Saitta, Thomas G. Kaye, Xing Xu (2020)
  An overview article on the paleo‑coloration of amniotes.
• Jasmina Wiemann​, Tzu-Ruei Yang, Philipp N. N Sander, Marion Schneider, Marianne Engeser, Stephanie Kath-Schorr, Christa E Müller, P. Martin Sander (2015)
  Studying the coloration markers in the fossil eggshell of Heyuannia huangi.
• Jasmina Wiemann, Tzu-Ruei Yang & Mark A. Norell (2018)
  A study of the coloration of eggs of different species.

Documents and files

• Roy_et_al_2020.pdf (PDF)
  Review article on amniote paleocolor in Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society.
• Wiemann_et_al_2015.pdf (PDF)
  Article describing the eggshell color of Heyuannia huangi.

Reconstructions

Fossils