Long-Necked Giant Was Fastest-Growing Dinosaur
Lufengosaurus Wikimedia CommonsThe Lufengosaurus grew like a 30-foot weed. During the Jurassic Period, nearly 200 million years ago, a dinosaur called Lufengosaurus roamed what is now the Yunnan Province in southern China. The long-necked plant eater was the biggest guy around at the time, at almost 30 feet long, and new research suggests it grew faster than all other known dinosaurs and living birds. Because, as you might imagine, the fossilized embryos of dinosaurs are somewhat difficult to stumble upon, we haven't known much about how they developed. With the recent discovery of a collection of eggshells and embryonic Lufengosaurus bones in various stages of development in a bone bed in Yunnan, an international team of paleontologists has been able to piece together an unprecedented amount of information about how these creatures developed within the egg. The team, led by Robert Reisz from the University of Toronto Mississauga, published...