Fossil Eggs Called Major Find

ORANGE — Six fossilized eggs resembling overstuffed, ocher-hued softballs were displayed Thursday at Chapman University amid claims--unconfirmed by scientific review--that they include one of the best-preserved dinosaur embryos yet discovered.

As evidence of the importance of the find, Lee Schiel, an antiquities broker based in Las Vegas who represents the eggs’ owner, showed CAT-scan images of one of the eggs at a news conference.

In the images, Schiel said, could be seen an unhatched dinosaur that he proclaimed “the find of the century.”

Schiel was flanked by the university president, a doctor from the hospital where the CAT-scan was taken and a paleontologist for an Orange County planning firm who analyzed the images for reporters.

But the importance of the fossils, which Schiel said had been dug up in Henan province in China in recent years, could not be independently confirmed Thursday afternoon.

Steven W. Conkling, the paleontologist, acknowledged that his expertise is in the area of ancient mammals. But he said he follows scientific reports on dinosaurs. “I’m not operating in a vacuum here,” he said.

Based on information supplied by Schiel about the origin of the find, Conkling said the images appear to show the remains of a bipedal dinosaur from the Cretaceous Period. That would make the fossils at least 65 million years old.

One dinosaur expert reached Thursday by telephone said the find should be submitted to scientific scrutiny before any judgments are drawn.

“If it doesn’t have any scientific data to go with it, then it’s just a curio,” said Mark Goodwin, a curator at UC Berkeley’s Museum of Paleontology. He said fossilized embryonic dinosaurs, while rare, are not unheard of.

Schiel said the fossils are not for sale and that the owner--whose name he would not disclose--wants them to be studied by researchers.