Science News Roundup: Fossils from Mongolia, Argentina show some dinosaurs and Antarctica's 'deflated football' fossil is world's second-biggest egg

The embryo-containing eggs - leathery on the outside rather than hard and calcified like those of birds - belonged to a dinosaur from Patagonia called Mussaurus from about 200 million years ago and one called Protoceratops from the Gobi Desert from about 75 million years ago, researchers said on Wednesday.

Following is a summary of current science news briefs.

Fossils from Mongolia, Argentina show some dinosaurs laid soft-shelled eggs

Scientists have unearthed the first fossils of soft-shelled eggs laid by dinosaurs - two disparate species from Argentina and Mongolia - in a discovery suggesting that the earliest dinosaurs produced such eggs before some lineages turned to hard shells. The embryo-containing eggs - leathery on the outside rather than hard and calcified like those of birds - belonged to a dinosaur from Patagonia called Mussaurus from about 200 million years ago and one called Protoceratops from the Gobi Desert from about 75 million years ago, researchers said on Wednesday.

Antarctica's 'deflated football' fossil is world's second-biggest egg

A mysterious 68-million-year-old fossil found on Seymour Island off Antarctica's coast that looked like a deflated football has turned out to be a unique find - the second-largest egg on record and one that may have belonged to a huge marine reptile that lived alongside the dinosaurs. The fossilized egg - measuring 8 by 11 inches (29 by 20 cm) - is only slightly smaller than eggs of Madagascar's giant flightless elephant birds that went extinct only in the past several centuries, scientists said on Wednesday.