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This timeline of egg fossils research is a chronologically ordered list of important discoveries, controversies of interpretation, taxonomic revisions, and cultural portrayals of egg fossils. Humans have encountered egg fossils for thousands of years. In stone age Mongolia, local peoples fashioned fossil dinosaur eggshell into jewelry. In the Americas, fossil eggs may have inspired Navajo creation myths about the human theft of a primordial water monster's egg. Nevertheless, the scientific study of fossil eggs began much later. As reptiles, dinosaurs were presumed to have laid eggs from the 1820s on, when their first scientifically documented remains were being described in England.〔 In 1859, the first scientifically documented dinosaur ''egg'' fossils were discovered in southern France by a Catholic priest and amateur naturalist named Father Jean-Jacques Poech, however he thought they were laid by giant birds. The first scientifically recognized dinosaur egg fossils were discovered serendipitously in 1923 by an American Museum of Natural History crew while looking for evidence of early humans in Mongolia. These eggs were mistakenly attributed to the locally abundant herbivore ''Protoceratops'', but are now known to be ''Oviraptor'' eggs. Egg discoveries continued to mount all over the world, leading to the development of multiple competing classification schemes. In 1975 Chinese paleontologist Zhao Zi-Kui started a revolution in fossil egg classification by developing a system of "parataxonomy" based on the traditional Linnaean system to classify eggs based on their physical qualities rather than their hypothesized mothers. Zhao's new method of egg classification was hindered from adoption by Western scientists due to language barriers. However, in the early 1990s Russian paleontologist Konstantin Mikhailov brought attention to Zhao's work in the English language scientific literature. ==Prescientific== (詳細はPaleolithic to early Neolithic * Mongolians fashioned fossil dinosaur eggshell into jewelry.〔 Precolumbian North America * A common theme in Navajo stories about Water Monsters involve the human theft of Water Monster eggs or young and the angry Monsters pursuing humanity through a series of worlds.〔 Stories like this influenced the Navajos to fear large fossil bones, which they felt shouldn't be disturbed, because doing so might awaken the enraged ghosts of the Water Monsters, who might resume their rampage with apocalyptic results.〔 Stories like this may have been based on the discovery of fossil eggs in western North America. Fossil eggs and nests from this region that may have inspired the legend were left behind by creatures like possible aetosaurs, giant condors, duck-billed dinosaurs, possible phytosaurs, large theropods, and sea turtles.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Timeline of egg fossil research」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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