Friday, Dec. 19, 1997 | 11:25 a.m.
An exhibit that opens today in the Las Vegas Natural History Museum could contain information pinpointing the cause and date of dinosaur extinction.
The collection, put together by Lee Schiel of Los Angeles, contains 65-million-year-old dinosaur eggs and cutting-edge CAT-scan imaging that shows the embryo of a previously undiscovered species of dinosaur, a segnasaur. The embryo is in what is called the "death position," with its head and legs arched back.
Irridium and metal were also found in the eggs, which advances the theory that dinosaurs became extinct when a giant meteor hit India about 65 million years ago.
"The significance of being able to have dinosaur eggs is a wonderful, wonderful event, especially for a young museum," said Marilyn Gillespie, director of the six-year-old Las Vegas museum.
"But these particular eggs that stand on the edge of a tremendous scientific breakthrough is very exciting," she said, predicting this exhibit would put the museum "on the map."
The eggs are part of a discovery made in China in 1991 and were featured in an extensive article in National Geographic titled "The Great Dinosaur Egg Hunt."
Many of what were considered to be the prime specimens of the 5,000 eggs in the Chinese discovery were loaned to scientists throughout the world for research, but none have yielded the potential that Schiel's eggs have.
Ironically, Schiel isn't even a scientist -- he's a Chinese art and antiquities collector who was lucky enough to get the golden eggs.
"It's funny. Give the bad eggs to the flunkie and he gets the one with the most significant information," Schiel said during a visit to Las Vegas.
The information contained inside the fossilized eggs probably wouldn't have been discovered, Schiel said, unless he had convinced Methodist Hospital of Southern California in Arcadia to let him use their cutting-edge CAT scan machine.
Other medical equipment, including X-ray machines, medical resonance imaging and less sophisticated CAT scans, had already been used to determine what was inside the eggs but had yielded no information.
"We were literally putting the dinosaur eggs in the CAT scan machine in between patients getting CAT scans for medical emergencies," Schiel said about the Picker PQ 5000 CT scanner.
The high resolution scans clearly show the head, legs, arms, tail and rib cage of a dinosaur embryo. The scans also show a piece of metal lodged in the egg.
"The second we knew (the egg) wasn't hollow, we knew we had just reinvented science," he said.
The dinosaur embryo was named Nicole, after the 4-year-old daughter of the CAT scan operator. Now Schiel takes eggs from the Nicole Dinosaur Embryo Project to schools around the country, giving children the opportunity to hold the eggs and learn more about dinosaurs.
Besides pinpointing the moment of extinction for dinosaurs, Schiel said the research being conducted will "explain a host of other things that are in the world today," such as the ability to predict planetary movement.
Schiel expects to wrap up his research within 18 months.
The dinosaur exhibit will be at the museum for the next 10 days. The museum is open daily from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., but will be closed Christmas Day.
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