Paleontologists believe that when dinosaurs laid eggs, they laid around 20 of them at a time. This is what is known as a “clutch”. Laying this many eggs at a time made it more likely that some eggs would survive if they were attacked by predators. This form of breeding is still employed by many species today, such as salmon and sea turtles.
Unfortunately, not a whole lot of the eggs would have survived long enough to hatch. Most of them would have been devoured by carnivorous dinosaurs. It is estimated that probably only about 10-20 percent of them would hatch. Which is why so many eggs would have to be laid in the first place.
Many people wonder why dinosaurs would lay eggs instead of having live births. After all, it seems that as soon as the mother left the nest, other animals could eat the eggs. The answer to this question is quite simple. Having the baby dinos develop in an egg is less taxing on the mother’s body. This then allows the mothers to conserve their resources in environments where resources may be scarce. They can then overcome the fact that the eggs are consumed by predators by producing a sufficient number to ensure that at least some of them hatch.
You would think that there would be a lot of dinosaur eggs floating around. After all, there were billions of dinosaurs roaming the Earth. And all of these dinosaurs must have laid trillions of eggs. So where are they? Well, the truth of the matter is that most of them didn’t make it. Most of them were devoured shortly after they were laid. Others were degraded by bacteria that invaded the shell of the egg and consumed the embryo. This is why it is extremely rare to find these eggs and also why scientists get so excited when they do! Every time a clutch is found it is very news worthy.
