Chinese scientists map dinosaur eggs underground — without digging

Chinese researchers have, for the first time, applied a high-precision three-dimensional electrical survey to fossil dinosaur eggs. The technique does not require digging.

At a nature reserve in Shiyan, Hubei province, the team laid cables and electrode grids on the surface and recorded data from an artificial electric field. From those readings they can reconstruct the underground geology in fine detail, without touching the fossils.

Zhao Bi, deputy chief engineer at the Hubei Institute of Geological Sciences, said the electrode array would allow a full map of the subsurface electric field under Qinglongshan.

“We urgently need two answers: how thick is the layer that actually contains the dinosaur eggs, and how far does it extend? Neither question can be settled by surface surveys alone,” he said. “We have also found that groundwater is the greatest threat to the eggs: on contact it triggers a chemical reaction and they decay. We hope to trace the source of the water. The real significance of this work is that, for the first time in China — and, we believe, in the world — deep-sounding technology is being used to investigate a fossil site underground.”

Qinglongshan holds some of the world’s largest and best-preserved concentrations of fossilized dinosaur eggs. It is the only site where such deposits have been conserved at scale, intact and in their original setting.