The 365 Toys are celebrating World Egg Day this week. I told the dinosaurs they could plan the photo shoot this time. Of course they were interested in dinosaur eggs, so I pointed them to a few web sites for information and pictures.
When I saw them next, they had taken their dinosaur egg photos out to the back stoop and were measuring an ordinary chicken egg for comparison. It had, I'm sorry to say, devolved into sort of a "mine is bigger than yours" session. The Neanderthal Man was heading back into the house, having lost interest in the whole topic.
I took the picture and helped them return the egg to the refrigerator. We did learn a few interesting facts about dinosaur eggs. From the Scholastic web site
http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/dinosaur-eggs-and-babies this tidbit of information about egg size:
"Q: What were the smallest and biggest eggs ever found?
A: The biggest dinosaur eggs we know are shaped like giant footballs and are about 19 inches long. They belong to a meat-eater from Asia called segnosaurus. The smallest dinosaur eggs are just a few inches across and more tennis ball-shaped and we don't know what dinosaur made them. (Don Lessem)"
So even though some dinosaur eggs were pretty large, they didn't correspond in size to the dinosaurs themselves. From this web page:
http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/palaeofiles/eggs/size.html
" there is a restriction to the maximum size of the egg an animal can lay. As the animal gets bigger, the eggshell becomes thicker. If an eggshell is too thick, the baby cannot hatch out." Also the eggshell needs to be thin enough to admit oxygen. (a number of web sites mentioned that.) I had no idea! So obviously those big dinosaurs didn't sit on their eggs to keep them warm.
Happy World Egg day from the Dinosaurs, Neanderthal Man, and me!
Monday 10/12 I just noticed that I had a typo (corrected now) in the tag for the 365 Toys theme so they didn't know the dinosaurs were playing with them last week. Apologies to the dinosaurs. Our World Egg Day greeting was meant for Friday when it was posted. Happy Belated World Egg Day.
