ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 7, 1995 TAG: 9512070083
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: HOLLYWOOD, FLA.
SOURCE: BOB FRENCH FORT LAUDERDALE SUN-SENTINEL
AFTER 80 MILLION YEARS, there's not much left, but the rocky fossil once held a dinosaur embryo.
Doctors on Wednesday huddled around the screen of a CT scan machine to study the insides of their patient - an 80-million-year-old dinosaur egg.
A few minutes later, the pronouncement: There once was life in the ancient egg.
``It's there. Something is in it. It was very young,'' said Edward Petuch, who holds a doctorate in paleontology.
Petuch and Dr. Martin Shugar, a Hollywood, Fla., surgeon, used X-rays from a CT scan at Memorial Regional Hospital to peek inside the bowling ball-size egg that was found in Argentina six months ago.
It was the first time a dinosaur egg was X-rayed at Memorial.
``It's definitely unique,'' said radiologist Dr. Joanne Housman.
After 90 minutes of testing, the egg revealed an inner core that had flecks of what appeared to have been the beginnings of a skeleton.
Petuch said the egg was probably at about the same stage of development as a 6-week-old human embryo. He said there probably won't be any further tests on the egg because so little was found. Still, he and Shugar were pleased with the results.
``If anyone expects to see a curled up baby dinosaur, that's not going to happen,'' Shugar said. ``This isn't Al Capone's vault. To look inside something that is 80 million years old is fascinating.''
The experiment had its lighter side. The egg was placed in a hospital bassinet covered with a blanket. About two dozen journalists followed it along hospital corridors to the testing rooms. Under patient's name in the computer, technicians entered ``Egg, Dinosaur.''
A magnetic resonance imaging machine failed to probe through the fossil's rocky surface. The MRI needs water or tissue to be present in the object being scanned.
``Obviously, this is one dried-up egg,'' said Petuch.
He said the egg was probably laid by a saltasaurus, a 40-foot-long plant-eating dinosaur that stood about 15 feet high at its shoulder. A saltasaurus looked like a brontosaurus with the addition of bony armor on its back. The 17-pound egg - one of the largest ever found - may have only been 2 or 3 weeks old when it died, probably by being covered with mud during a flood.
Over the years, the egg's organic molecules were replaced by molecules of minerals, preserving it in stone. Because the embryo didn't develop a complete skeleton, only a few half-inch long fragments were preserved.
The egg will be on display for the next two months at Graves Museum of Archaeology and Natural History in Dania, Fla.
LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Dr. Martin Shugar, a Hollywood, Fla., surgeon andby CNBamateur paleontologist, steadies a saltasaurus egg before it gets a
CT scan Wednesday. color.