''Dendroolithus'' is an

oogenus Egg fossils are the fossilized remains of eggs laid by ancient animals. As evidence of the physiological processes of an animal, egg fossils are considered a type of trace fossil. Under rare circumstances a fossil egg may preserve the remains ...

of Dendroolithid dinosaur egg found in the late Cenomanian Chichengshan Formation ( Tiantai Group), in the Gong-An-Zhai and

Santonian The Santonian is an age in the geologic timescale or a chronostratigraphic stage. It is a subdivision of the Late Cretaceous Epoch or Upper Cretaceous Series. It spans the time between 86.3 ± 0.7 mya ( million years ago) and 83.6 ± 0.7 m ...

Majiacun Formations of

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

and the

Maastrichtian The Maastrichtian ( ) is, in the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) geologic timescale, the latest age (geology), age (uppermost stage (stratigraphy), stage) of the Late Cretaceous epoch (geology), Epoch or Upper Cretaceous series (s ...

Nemegt and

Campanian The Campanian is the fifth of six ages of the Late Cretaceous epoch on the geologic timescale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). In chronostratigraphy, it is the fifth of six stages in the Upper Cretaceous Series. Campa ...

Barun Goyot Formation The Baruungoyot Formation (also known as Barun Goyot) is a geological formation dating to the Late Cretaceous Period. It is located within and is widely represented in the Gobi Desert Basin, in the Ömnögovi Province of Mongolia. Descriptio ...

Mongolia Mongolia is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south and southeast. It covers an area of , with a population of 3.5 million, making it the world's List of countries and dependencies by po ...

. They can be up to 162 mm long and 130 mm wide. These eggs may have been laid by a Therizinosaur,

Sauropod Sauropoda (), whose members are known as sauropods (; from '' sauro-'' + '' -pod'', 'lizard-footed'), is a clade of saurischian ('lizard-hipped') dinosaurs. Sauropods had very long necks, long tails, small heads (relative to the rest of their b ...

, or

Ornithopod Ornithopoda () is a clade of ornithischian dinosaurs, called ornithopods (). They represent one of the most successful groups of herbivorous dinosaurs during the Cretaceous. The most primitive members of the group were bipedal and relatively sm ...

. The oospecies ''"D." shangtangensis'' was originally classified as ''Dendroolithus'', however, it has since been moved to its own distinct oogenus, ''

Similifaveoloolithus ''Similifaveoloolithus'' is an oogenus of fossil dinosaur egg from the Tiantai County, Tiantai basin in Zhejiang Province, China. It is the sole known oospecies of the oofamily Similifaveoloolithidae.Wang Qiang, Zhao Zikui, Wang Xiaolin, Zhang Sh ...

''.Wang Qiang, Zhao Zi-kui, Wang Xiao-lin, and Jiang Yan-gen. (2011) "New ootypes of dinosaur eggs from the Late Cretaceous in Tiantai Basin, Zhejiang Province, China." ''Vertebrata PalAsiatica'' 49(4):446-449. This oogenus is related with embryos of the theropod ''

Torvosaurus ''Torvosaurus'' () is a genus of large Megalosaurinae, megalosaurine Theropoda, theropod dinosaur that lived approximately 165 to 148 million years ago during the Callovian to Tithonian ages of the late Middle Jurassic, Middle and Late Jurassi ...

''.

References

Dinosaur reproduction Egg fossils Fossils of China Fossils of Mongolia Nemegt Formation Fossil parataxa described in 1988 Baruungoyot Formation {{eggshell-stub