Dinosaurs Laid Blue Eggs

Robins may be famous for their beautiful blue eggs, but ancient feathered dinosaurs beat them to the punch.

Looking at fossil eggshells from China, researchers have found evidence that an omnivorous, ostrich-like dinosaur laid clutches of blue-green eggs, potentially helping to camouflage them in open nests dug into the ground.

Many birds lay white, unpigmented eggs—as do all lizards, turtles, crocodiles, and the only known egg-laying mammals, the platypus and the echidna.

For this reason, ornithologists had long assumed that colored eggshells evolved solely in some groups of birds after nonavian dinosaurs had died out.

Commonly found in the fossil beds of eastern China, _Heyuannia_ was a parrot-beaked, feathered species that walked on its hind legs and would have been about five feet long.

UCJ, UNILORIN.