The oldest known dinosaur nests have been found at the same South African park where scientists previously unearthed the oldest known dinosaur embryo.
Paleontologists recently found ten nests—each containing several tightly clustered eggs—in a nearly vertical cliff in Golden Gate Highlands National Park. Both the nests and the previously discovered embryo date back 190 million years.
The new find shows that the region was an early Jurassic nesting site used by a plant-eater called Massospondylus carinatus. The site predates other known dino nesting grounds around the world by more than a hundred million years, scientists reported this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
—Christine Dell’Amore
