On July 13, 1923, American explorer, adventurer, and paleontologist, Roy Chapman Andrews, was the first person in the world to discover dinosaur eggs, in the Gobi Desert, Mongolia. Originally thought to belong to Protoceratops, the eggs were later determined to be from the theropod Oviraptor.
Roy Chapman Andrews traveled the world studying fossils, from mammals to dinosaurs, during the first half of the twentieth century. Andrews worked and collected fossil specimens for the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City, New York. Throughout his career, Andrews collected bones of many animal species, including a previously undiscovered species of a horned and herbivorous dinosaur, later named Proceratops andrewsi in his honor. Andrews published widely read narratives about his travels and field experiences, such as On the Trail of Ancient Man and Across Mongolian Plains. Andrews led expeditions for the Central Asiatic Expeditions in the Gobi Desert, which recovered many previously unknown fossil specimens. His Central Asiatic team discovered the first scientifically recognized dinosaur eggs, which provided scientists with information about the eggs that dinosaurs produced.
Despite beginning with research on whales, Andrews stated in his 1943 autobiography that his true dream of scientific exploration was on land searching for mammals, possibly even fossil evidence of ancient people. Andrews stated that he had wanted to travel to Asia to find evidence to support a hypothesis of Henry Fairfield Osborn, then AMNH’s president, on the origin of mammalian life. Osborn’s research compared the anatomy and locations of species and he argued that mammals, including humans, originated in central Asia. Andrews worked to provide the fossil evidence for that hypothesis.
After he received his Master’s of Science degree in 1914, Andrews married Yvette Borup. According to Andrews’ biographer Charles Gallenkamp, his wife shared Andrews’s adventurous spirit. With the support of his wife, the newlywed Andrews proposed a series of expeditions to China and Mongolia in 1915 to collect fossils for the museum. Andrews recruited the help of donors such as New York businessmen and financiers John Pierpont Morgan and John D. Rockefeller to raise money for the endeavors. The trips, later called the Central Asiatic Expeditions, occurred from 1922 to 1930.
During Andrews’s first Central Asiatic Expedition in 1922, his team recovered fragments of dinosaur eggshell in southern Mongolia at a location the explorers called the Flaming Cliffs. Andrews and his team collected the eggshell along with many other mammal and dinosaur fossils, but the expedition departed the following morning, not exploring the site. The following year the team returned to the Flaming Cliffs to further excavate the sediments. That expedition yielded more eggshell fragments in addition to whole dinosaur eggs, including eggs that were part of nests called clutches.
Andrews’s egg discoveries marked an early scientific study of dinosaur reproduction. The eggs were largely complete, in the shape of elongated ovals, with a rough bumpy texture to the eggshell. Although the eggs did not contain embryonic remains, scientists studied the microstructure of the fossilized eggshell to confirm that they were dinosaurian. The discovery that some dinosaurs laid eggs in clutches provided the first information about reproductive strategies of dinosaurs. Scientists noted that dinosaurs laid many eggs at one time to maximize reproductive success, much like their close relatives, crocodiles.
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