Scientists Find The Biggest Soft-Shelled Egg Ever, Nicknamed 'The Thing'

"In 2018, paleontologist Julia Clarke was visiting a colleague named David Rubilar-Rogers at Chile's National Museum of Natural History. He showed her a mysterious fossil that he'd collected years earlier in Antarctica. He and his coworkers called it 'The Thing.'"

"'It was weird enough that they decided to collect it, even though it wasn't clear what it was. It definitely wasn't bone, but it was strikingly unusual,' recalls Clarke, who works at the University of Texas at Austin."

"The object was more than 11 by 7 inches in size, and looked like a deflated football. Clarke immediately realized that "The Thing" was a giant egg--a soft-shelled egg. And it was from 66 million years ago, around the time when an asteroid hit Earth and led to dinosaur extinction."

"Many turtles, snakes, and lizards lay eggs with soft, flexible shells. 'The Thing' is the largest soft-shelled egg ever, by a long shot, says Clarke."