Scientists Found a Mysterious Giant Egg in Antarctica

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Scientists in Antarctica made a jaw-dropping discovery: a giant, mysterious egg buried in the icy depths. At first, they weren’t even sure it was an egg—it looked like a deflated football but way bigger. After some testing, they realized it belonged to a prehistoric marine creature, possibly something like a mosasaur, which ruled the oceans millions of years ago. What’s wild is that this egg, which is soft and leathery, is the largest of its kind ever found. It’s like a snapshot of ancient life, perfectly preserved in the freezing Antarctic conditions. Who knows what other prehistoric surprises are still hidden under all that ice?  Credit: nahiean_nrf / Reddit ScaringStick / Reddit Frank Schmidt / YouTube Earth Touch / YouTube Johnny-Virgil / Reddit oldspacesoul / Reddit Icefishuk: By Uwe kils, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=207851 Nototropis swammerdamei: By Hans Hillewaert, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1181398 Animation is created by Bright Side.  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/   Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV   Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our Social Media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightside Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en   Stock materials (photos, footages and other): https://www.depositphotos.com https://www.shutterstock.com https://www.eastnews.ru ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.

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00:00In 2011, scientists from Chile found a weird-looking fossil in Antarctica that looked like a squashed

00:07football.

00:08Almost 10 years later, the rock just sat on a shelf in Chile's National Museum of Natural

00:13History with no specific label.

00:16It went by The Thing in the museum because it looked like something from a science fiction

00:21movie.

00:22When the scientists finally got their hands on the strange fossil, it turned out it was

00:26actually a giant soft-shell egg from around 66 million years ago.

00:32This one is more than 11 inches long and 7 inches wide.

00:35A regular chicken egg is just 2.5 inches long, and an ostrich egg is almost 6 inches long

00:41for comparison.

00:43So The Thing won the title of the biggest soft-shell egg ever found and the second-largest

00:48egg of any animal we know of.

00:51The only bigger egg that was ever found was that of the extinct Madagascan elephant bird,

00:56which is also 1.5 times as tall as Michael Jordan.

01:00The bird, not the egg.

01:02The Antarctic egg is also special because it's the first fossil ever found in this

01:06part of the world.

01:07So whoever left it there must've been one big creature, probably a giant sea turtle

01:13that lived long ago, like a mousasaur.

01:16This is surprising because most scientists thought these creatures didn't even lay eggs,

01:21so this discovery could change what we know about them.

01:27The egg is also unique because it has a thin eggshell and no pores, which is totally different

01:32from most dinosaur eggs.

01:34It actually looks more like the eggs of lizards and snakes, but it came from a giant creature

01:39related to these animals.

01:41No known dinosaurs or flying reptiles from that time and place were big enough to lay

01:46such a huge egg, so it must've been a mousasaur after all.

01:51But we can't be 100% sure.

01:54Scientists did a lot of work and studied 259 types of living reptiles, like lizards and

02:00snakes, and their eggs.

02:02From this, they figured out that the mommy who laid the egg was probably at least 23

02:07feet long, not counting her tail.

02:10During the late Cretaceous period, this part of Antarctica might've been like a nursery.

02:16Paleontologists have found bones of tiny mousasaurs and plesiosaurs in the same area, along with

02:21bones from the grown-up ones.

02:26Archaeologists in Norway made another cool, but literally, discovery and found dozens

02:30of arrows that had been hidden in ice for 6,000 years.

02:35They were melting out of a large ice patch in the high mountains, covering an area of

02:39about 45 football fields.

02:42In 2014 and 2016, when the summers were extra warm, scientists went to an ice patch called

02:48Langfone to look around.

02:50They also found lots of reindeer bones and antlers there.

02:53Some of the arrows were whole and some in pieces, along with 5 arrowheads around the

02:58melting ice patch.

03:00This is more arrows than have been found at any other frozen site in the world.

03:04Some of the 68 found arrows date back to the Neolithic period, and the newest ones

03:09are from the 14th century of the Common Era.

03:12Ice is like the perfect time machine that can preserve whatever ends up there in an

03:17almost perfect condition.

03:19Langfone became famous as one of the first ice patch sites after a local hiker found

03:25a 3,300-year-old leather shoe right next to its edge.

03:30Scientists are studying places like this to understand how people used these sites

03:35and how the ice patches from Norway to North America changed over time.

03:42Once upon a time, around 32,000 years ago to be exact, a squirrel buried some seeds

03:48near a river in Siberia.

03:51Am I the only one getting the Ice Age vibes?

03:54Anyway, these seeds belonged to a plant with cute white flowers.

03:58Dozens of years later, a group of scientists found these seeds buried deep in the frozen

04:03ground, about as far down as a 12-story building is tall.

04:07The seeds were surrounded by ice and bones of animals, like mammoths, bison, and woolly

04:12rhinoceroses.

04:14The mature seeds had been damaged, maybe by some squirrel, but some of the younger seeds

04:18still had good plant parts inside them.

04:21The scientists carefully took those out and put them in small containers to help them

04:26grow.

04:27And here comes the coolest part.

04:29They were able to grow the plants!

04:31Their flowers were shaped a little differently from the flowers of the same plant that grows

04:35today.

04:36After a year, the Ice Age plant even made new seeds.

04:40Based on this, the scientists suggested that permafrost could be a depository for an ancient

04:46gene pool, and we could find extinct species there and bring them back to life.

04:54Scientists on an icebreaker in Antarctica were looking for whales, but found something

04:58way more unusual.

05:00The camera behind the ship, which is as heavy as a car, detected 16 million icefish nests

05:06on the floor of the Weddell Sea.

05:09The nests were located about every 10 inches in all directions and covered an area of 93

05:15square miles, which is slightly bigger than the whole of Washington, D.C.

05:20The colony even had a distinct border, which was a line in the sand.

05:24The scientists were in the area because they were studying a special spot in the ocean

05:29where the water was a little warmer than the water around it.

05:32In this warmer water, they found tiny animals called zooplankton near the top.

05:38When the young icefish hatch, they swim up to this area to eat the zooplankton before

05:42going back down to the seafloor to grow up and have their own offspring.

05:47Since there was so much food, it made sense to see icefish in this warm water.

05:52But they didn't expect to find such a huge number of icefish nests, much more than anyone

05:57had ever seen before.

06:01New Zealand's Antarctic Heritage Fund found some old photonegatives in a hut in Antarctica.

06:07They turned out to be unique images from the Ross Sea Party.

06:11It was a famous failed expedition led by Ernest Shackleton.

06:15He wanted to become the first person to cross Antarctica by land, from the Weddell Sea to

06:20the Ross Sea, passing through the South Pole.

06:24But things went wrong when their ship, the Aurora, was blown out to sea.

06:28They had to use the hut from another explorer, Captain Robert Falcon Scott.

06:33His goal was to be the first person to reach the North Pole, but sadly, he didn't succeed

06:38either.

06:39The negatives were made of cellulose nitrate and were found stuck together in the small

06:44box.

06:45The Trust took the negatives back to New Zealand, where they carefully separated them and discovered

06:5022 hidden images.

06:52Many of the photos were damaged, but the Trust could still recognize some familiar places

06:57around McMurdo Sound, a well-known area in Antarctica.

07:01No one knows for sure who took the pictures.

07:06In December 2021, some scientists noticed a strange mark on the Larsen Ice Shelf, a

07:12giant sheet of ice off the eastern coast of Antarctica.

07:16They thought it might be a river flowing under the ice, so they drilled down over 1,600 feet

07:22to check it out.

07:23They expected to find water, but they didn't expect to see that the water was full of fast-moving

07:29creatures called amphipods.

07:31The scientists also found that the water in the underground river had unusual layers of

07:36currents moving in different directions, which they still don't fully understand.

07:42Another surprising thing happened during their research.

07:44On December 20th of the same year, a volcano erupted far away in Tonga, and the pressure

07:50waves from the eruption were detected all the way down in the ice river in Antarctica.

07:56It shows how everything on our planet is connected, even in the most distant places.

08:06That's it for today, so hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like

08:11and share it with your friends.

08:12Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!

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