Alberta dinosaur egg excavation could yield rare fossilized babies

Paleontologists in Alberta say they will be conducting a dinosaur egg excavation Monday afternoon that could yield fossilized dinosaur babies or the first full nest of its kind in Canada.

The Devil's Coulee dinosaur egg site near Warner, Alta., is Canada's first and largest dinosaur nesting ground.

"A great diversity of dinosaurs built their nests 75 million years ago in what is now Devil's Coulee," said theDevil's Coulee Co-operating Society in a release.

The groupsays FranoisTherrien, a curator of dinosaur paleontology, stumbled across a Hypacrosaurus egg eroding out of a hill earlier this summer.

He also found asecond location containing Maiasaura eggshells.Both the Maiasauraand Hypacrosauruswere duck-billed dinosaurs.

The numberof eggshells found at the second site indicates there could be anest below the surface and paleontologists say such a find would be the first of its kind discovered in Canada.

Therrien and acrewfrom the RoyalTyrrellMuseum planned toexcavateat both sites Monday in the hope of retrieving eggs and possibly a fossilized baby dinosaur.

Site provides embryonic dinosaur material

Thesite was discovered in 1987 after a local teenager found dinosaur eggshell fragments, according totheDevil's Coulee Co-operating Society.

Since thenthe site has been one of paleontology's best resources for embryonic dinosaur material.

The society says four Hypacrosaurus nests have yielded several eggs containing embryonicmaterial, which researchers used to change many of the existing theories about duck-billed dinosaurs.

A dinosaur nest hasn't been uncovered at the site since 2008.