Studies of dinosaur eggs flourish in southern China

They accidentally found the eggs in exposed soil at the fractured bridge foundation on the river bank, which were later brought back to a repair workshop of the Heyuan Dinosaur Museum.

"We had to carry out a long, meticulous, rigorous and scientific repair work on those egg fossils," Huang said.

The eggs were embedded in red sandstone and some of them ended up being broken after the sandstone was crushed during deep excavation and rescue, according to Huang.

"Repairing a nest of dinosaur eggs requires patience, perseverance and a meticulous approach by workers," he said.

Workers had to rely on hammers, steel chisels and high-carbon steel needles to carve and polish the eggs due to a lack of funds in that early stage of work. Conditions later improved after sophisticated tools such as geological hammers and imported pneumatic guns were introduced.

"Like dentists, workers here were carving and polishing the eggs in a very meticulous way, slowly exposing the fossils from the red sandstone body more accurately and gradually picking out the historical information of the dinosaurs," he said.

It usually took at least one month to repair a single round egg fossil with a diameter of about 6 centimeters, and about four years for three workers in the museum to repair six large nests of such eggs, said Huang.

"It is not all about quantity. Quality and scientific attitude also matter in the process of repairing dinosaur eggs," he added.