Some dinosaurs had exquisite eggs with colours, spots, speckles

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some dinosaurs laid coloured, speckled and spotted eggs boasting exquisite hues of blue and brown, scientists said on Thursday, in a discovery that scrambles the notion that such exceptional traits originated with birds. An analysis of 12 fossilized dinosaur eggshells from Europe, Asia, North America and South America detected the same two pigments present in colourful birds eggs in a dinosaur group called eumaniraptorans, which includes well-known meat eaters like Velociraptor and the small feathered dinosaur ancestors of birds. "We discovered that egg colour is not a trait unique to our modern birds, but evolved in their non-avian dinosaur ancestors," said Yale University paleontologist Jasmina Wiemann, who led the study published in the journal Nature

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