News story: 140 Ma dino embryo

[Donald Lamson <dlamson@iea.com>]

01:22 PM ET 06/22/97

``Jurassic Park'' discovered in central Portugal

         
            By Jose Ribeiro
            LOURINHA, Portugal (Reuter) - Archeologists in central
Portugal said Sunday they discovered the fossilized embryo of a
meat-eating dinosaur believed to date from 140 million years
ago, twice the age of any such previous discovery.
            Philippe Taquet, director of the Paris National History
Museum's Paleontology Laboratory, told a news conference that
the oldest embryos discovered until now -- some 20 in all -- had
been found in the United States and the Gobi Desert of Mongolia
and were about 70 million years old.
            The Portuguese embryo, found inside a fossil egg, was not
only the world's oldest but also the first to be discovered from
the Jurassic rather than the Cretaceous period, Taquet said.
            The dividing line between the two is set at around 140
million years ago.
            ``'Jurassic Park' is not in the United States. It is here in
Portugal,'' he said. Steven Spielberg's blockbuster movie
features a scientist who recreates dinosaurs using cell material
preserved in amber.
            However, recent research has shown that DNA, the genetic
material which is the blueprint of life, cannot survive in amber
for such long periods.
            The egg with the embryo was one of a first batch of 34
Jurassic age dinosaur eggs to be scanned at the Lourinha site,
Taquet said. Bones were also found in three others.
            But there was a chance that further embryos could be
discovered as scientists still had 66 more eggs to examine, he
added.
            ``They are very, very old. We hope to learn a lot from this.
It is very exciting ... a great adventure,'' Taquet said.
            The eggs were originally discovered at Lourinha, some 42
miles north of Lisbon, by Portuguese archeologist Isabel Mateus
in 1993. But their importance was only recently revealed by
testing.
            Taquet said the oldest dinosaur eggs ever discovered were
found in the Patagonian Desert in southern Argentina and date
from 230 million years ago, but they were empty.
         ^REUTER@