ArticlePeerJ2017
Dinosaur origin of egg color: oviraptors laid blue-green eggs.
Article in PeerJ, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 53 citations in OpenAlex.
- Article
- Novel Quantification of Eggshell Surfaces inEcology and evolution · 2025Article
- Growing with dinosaurs: a review of dinosaur reproduction and ontogeny.Biology letters · 2025Review
- The macroecology of Mesozoic dinosaurs.Biology letters · 2024Review
- Chthonic severance: dinosaur eggs of the Mesozoic, the significance of partially buried eggs and contact incubation precursors.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Molecular Taphonomy of Heme: Chemical Degradation of Hemin under Presumed Fossilization Conditions.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Independent Evidence for the Preservation of Endogenous Bone Biochemistry in a Specimen ofBiology · 2023Article
- The diverse terminology of reptile eggshell microstructure and its effect on phylogenetic comparative analyses.Journal of anatomy · 2022Review
- Review
- Chemistry of porphyrins in fossil plants and animals.RSC advances · 2021Review
- Recent advances in amniote palaeocolour reconstruction and a framework for future research.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2020Article
- Article
- Article
- An Early Cretaceous enantiornithine (Aves) preserving an unlaid egg and probable medullary bone.Nature communications · 2019Article
- Fossilization transforms vertebrate hard tissue proteins into N-heterocyclic polymers.Nature communications · 2018Article
- Article
- Cracking the egg: the use of modern and fossil eggs for ecological, environmental and biological interpretation.Royal Society open science · 2018Review
- Incubation behaviours of oviraptorosaur dinosaurs in relation to body size.Biology letters · 2018Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Protoporphyrin (PP) and biliverdin (BV) give rise to the enormous diversity in avian egg coloration. Egg color serves several ecological purposes, including post-mating signaling and camouflage. Egg camouflage represents a major character of open-nesting birds which accomplish protection of their unhatched offspring against visually oriented predators by cryptic egg coloration. Cryptic coloration evolved to match the predominant shades of color found in the nesting environment. Such a selection pressure for the evolution of colored or cryptic eggs should be present in all open nesting birds and relatives. Many birds are open-nesting, but protect their eggs by continuous brooding, and thus exhibit no or minimal eggshell pigmentation. Their closest extant relatives, crocodiles, protect their eggs by burial and have unpigmented eggs. This phylogenetic pattern led to the assumption that colored eggs evolved within crown birds. The mosaic evolution of supposedly avian traits in non-avian theropod dinosaurs, however, such as the supposed evolution of partially open nesting behavior in oviraptorids, argues against this long-established theory. Using a double-checking liquid chromatography ESI-Q-TOF mass spectrometry routine, we traced the origin of colored eggs to their non-avian dinosaur ancestors by providing the first record of the avian eggshell pigments protoporphyrin and biliverdin in the eggshells of Late Cretaceous oviraptorid dinosaurs. The eggshell parataxon
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.