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.
Andrews and his team did not find any eggs containing fossilized embryos, so to identify the species that the eggs belonged to, they relied on the frequency of other fossil species recovered at the site. Andrews and his team said that the eggs likely belonged to a horn-faced and herbivorous dinosaur Proceratops andrewsi, later named after Andrews because he was the researcher who discovered the species. The team recovered many other Proceratops andrewsi fossils from the sediments that contained the eggs, so the team concluded that the eggs were of the same species. Osborn published the taxonomic assignment in 1924. However, scientists later revised that taxonomic assignment when in the 1990s a team lead by Mark Norell from the AMNH recovered identically shaped eggs from the Djadochta Formation in the Gobi Desert containing embryonic remains. The embryonic remains more closely resembling a bird-like species of dinosaur named Oviraptor philoceratops.
The dinosaur eggs that Andrews and his team brought back to the United States from Mongolia generated media attention across the country, in part due to the high profile fundraising Andrews had secured for the expedition. In the midst of the media attention, Andrews auctioned off an egg in New York City to raise money for future expeditions. The auction angered the Chinese government, which ruled Mongolia at the time, because Andrews had told them that while the fossils were scientifically valuable, the eggs possessed no monetary value. Although the auction was largely symbolic, with the winner donating the egg to a museum, there was a delay in the next expedition for more than a year while Andrews tried to reconcile with the Chinese government.
Despite the media attention, it took decades for the eggs to spark research about them. A few scientists described the microstructure of the eggshell. After 1993, when Norell and his team recovered more clutches of the same egg species, with one egg containing embryonic remains, scientists further examined the eggs recovered by Andrews. Those scientists celebrated Andrews for bringing the first dinosaur eggs to public attention, and for initiating the study of dinosaur reproduction and early development.
Andrews continued to head expeditions for the AMNH until 1934 when he became the AMNH’s director, a position that occupied much of his time. Andrews’s first wife Yvette asked for a separation in 1927 and divorced him in 1931 on the grounds of desertion, as he spent most of his time in the field. Prior to their divorce, the couple had two sons, George Borup Andrews and Roy Kevin Andrews. Andrews later married Wilhelmina Christmas in 1935.
Andrews states in his autobiography that, as director of the AMNH, he struggled with the lack of physical exercise and excitement that the position entailed. He resigned in 1942 and became honorary director, which enabled him to spend time with his second wife at a farm in northwestern Connecticut. There, Andrews returned to the same activities he enjoyed as a child, such as hunting, fishing, and building trails.
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