Valuable agate in the London Museum turned out to be a dinosaur egg

Since 1883, the mineralogical collection of the Natural History Museum in London has kept a stone, inside of which, as natural scientists have long believed, was agate. In 2018, it was selected for an exhibition in France by museum worker Robin Hansen, who drew attention to this specimen. However, it turned out that the exhibit is more complex than the researchers thought, and is directly related to dinosaurs. An article about an amazing find published portal NHM (Natural history museum).

It is reported that dinosaur experts examined the stone and suggested that it was not just a mineral, but a Tyrannosaurus rex egg, which is 60 million years old. Computed tomography was performed for the examination. The density of agate was high; therefore, even such an analysis did not allow us to isolate fine details of the sample under study. However, the shell – a thin layer around the agate – indicated that it was a shell.

Hansen noted the uniqueness of this find and the importance of studying museum collections. He explained that once a stone found in India in 1883 was classified as agate, based on the methods of analysis available at that time to scientists. Modern equipment allows us to go much further in the study of not only this egg, which for a long time was considered an agate.

“Only now we realized that there is something special about this specimen – agate filled this spherical structure, which turned out to be a dinosaur egg,” said Robin Hansen. According to scientists, the agate in the shell of a dinosaur egg was formed under the influence of a volcanic eruption.

The article notes that the egg still got to the exhibition, but dedicated not to miners, but to ancient reptiles. The unique specimen can be seen in the Titanosaurus: The Life of the Largest Dinosaur exhibit, along with a 3D scan of the specimen that visitors can touch.