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Uneasy Over Eggs

Evening falls on a small village in western India. The cows are coming home, and it is time for Manjibhai Babhor, a farmer, to pray to his ancestors by the river. He sits before a gray sphere, its red marks highlighted by the setting sun.

"We consider this a dev ka pathar (God's stone)," he says. "Every time I cut the crop, I offer thanksgiving."

Babhor doesn't realize his praying rock is the fossilized egg of a Titanosaurus, a Brachiosaurus-like dinosaur that nested along the river millions of years ago. By studying such eggs, scientists may be able to crack open mysteries of dinosaur life and death. But Babhor and his neighbors don't want to give them up.

The 2,000 eggs in India's Gujarat state could shed light on the great extinction that occurred 65 million years ago. Some scientists believe dinosaurs died off after a meteorite as wide as 25 miles slammed into what is now India, triggering tidal waves, acid rain and earthquakes. Evidence for this theory may lie in dinosaur eggs laid just before this catastrophe.

Nearly 200 nests of dinosaur eggs are known--109 in Asia--but most of the deposits are skimpy. None of the eggs found so far in India has held the body of an unhatched dinosaur, or embryo. Scientists have only recently focused on the eggs in Gujarat.

"It's an incredible dinosaur nesting site, stretching almost 1,000 miles," says paleontologist Sankar Chatterjee of Texas. He will return to study the Gujarat site in June. "The fossils date from the time just before the creatures became extinct," he explains.

Guarding Their Nests
Giving up the dinosaur eggs seems like a rotten deal to Gujarat's tribal groups. "We've been worshipping them from the time of our fathers and grandfathers," says villager Mansingh Sanghada. "They are sacred."

Other villagers trade the fossils for $3 or less to dealers, even though the dinosaur eggs sell for up to $650 in other countries. For now, anyone can scramble for the eggs: Indian officials refuse to protect the site. Without government cooperation and help from tribes that treasure their praying stones, a priceless part of natural history may be lost.

Do the eggs belong to the people who worship them, or should they be protected for scientists to study?

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