Giant dinosaurs may have fasted like emperor penguins when laying eggs

By James Urquhart

Titanosaur dinosaurs – thought to have been the largest animals to walk on Earth and which have been found on every continent – might have gone hungry and thirsty when building nests and laying eggs.

Léa Leuzinger at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina and her colleagues studied stable carbon and oxygen isotopes in 71 titanosaur eggshells and a tooth, all unearthed from three fossilised nesting sites in Argentina. The fossils are between 66 million and 100 million years old.

Food and water contain carbon …