Cretaceous dinosaur and crocodylomorph egg records of the Sanshui Basin, Guangdong Province, southern China

Abstract

This paper describes newly discovered dinosaur and crocodylomorph egg fragments from the Upper Cretaceous Sanshui and Dalangshan formations of the Sanshui Basin of Guangdong Province, southern China. Despite the absence of macroscopic information, the eggshell specimens can be identified to the oofamilies Prismatoolithidae, Elongatoolithidae and Krokolithidae, and it is hypothesized that these three families of eggs correspond to troodontids, oviraptorids and crocodiloids, respectively. Comparison with egg fossils from Nanxiong Basin, Heyuan Basin and Ganzhou Basin highlights the similarity between these egg assemblages and those from Nanxiong Basin. The egg fossils found in the Sanshui and the Dalangshan formations enrich the known faunal types in the research area and facilitate further studies on the diversity of Late Cretaceous vertebrate assemblages in the Sanshui Basin.