10-Year-Old Boy Finds 11 Dinosaur Eggs While Playing

Friday, July 26, 2019

Heyuan Radio and Television Station

The boy reportedly recognized what the eggs were because he loved science.

A 10-year-old boy in China found 11 dinosaur eggs while he was playing outside.

Here's what we know

The young boy had been looking for something he could use to crack open walnuts when he came across a strange rock with circles on it.

"Then I called my mother over, [and we] thought the shell looked like that of a dinosaur egg," Zhang Yangzhe, the boy, told the Heyuan Radio and Television Station, according to the Daily Mail.

His mother said he had recognized what dinosaur eggs looked like from his trip to a museum.

The boy's mother called local authorities, and the Heyuan Dinosaur Museum excavated the site and dated the eggs to the late Cretaceous period. Researchers have not yet said whether or not they have been able to determine the type of dinosaur that laid these eggs.

This region of China is home to many dinosaur fossils. Heyuan, a city with a population of 3 million, is billed as China's "home of dinosaurs," the Daily Mail said.

Image source: Daily Mail video screen capture

What else?

This isn't the first time that an important fossil was discovered accidentally by a young child.

In November 2016, 9-year-old Jude Sparks tripped over the skull of a Stegomastodon, an ancient elephant-like animal, near his family's home in New Mexico.

In 2018, a 6-year-old Naomi Vaughan in Oregon found the fossil of a rare sea creature while she was digging in the dirt near her older sister's soccer game.

In 2004, 7-year-old Diego Suarez in Chili accidentally set a world record for being the "youngest person to discover a fossil of an unknown dinosaur species," according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

Source: www.theblaze.com