The eggs found last August in the Miocene-Pliocene deposits of Órzola could pass through a particle accelerator, depending on the results obtained from the CT scan to which they will be subjected. This has been pointed out by the Historical Heritage Service of the Cabildo, which this Wednesday presented the results of these excavations carried out in Valle Grande, Valle Chico and Fuente Gusa. Some i[nvestigations that La Voz already echoed->59151] at the time, after a group of researchers were excavating in these sites for 13 days last summer.
The president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Pedro San Ginés, accompanied by the Councilor for Historical Heritage, Juan Antonio de la Hoz, and the Head of the Area Service, Nona Perera, have been in charge of presenting the results of this study and the fossils extracted in these three places.
These fossils are specified in two whole and fragmented ratite eggs (ancestral species of the ostrich family); two molds of whole and fragmented eggs of this same species with the presence of pores; a snake vertebra (boa); multiple fragments of turtle eggs; fossil terrestrial gastropods and samples of the different stratigraphic levels of the sites. The ratite egg fossils could be 5 million years old.
Nona Perera, Head of the Historical Heritage Service of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, explained that "the materials found are currently under study." "A CT scan will be performed on the whole eggs, possibly at the San Roque Clinic in Lanzarote," she said. Depending on the results, Perera explained, the Cabildo will choose to transfer them to the ICP (Catalan Institute of Paleontology) or to Burgos; or ultimately to Grenoble (France), to pass through a synchrotron (particle accelerator).
Another analysis that will be done is the determination of the taxon of the eggshells, according to the head of the Heritage Service, "since if it is ruled out that it does not belong to the African species, it could belong to one of the island itself."
The snake vertebra (boa) is in the Natural History Museum in Paris, where the specialist Salvador Baylón is studying it. The fragments of turtle eggs, on the other hand, will be studied jointly with those of the Tenerife Museum, although at the moment only those found in Lanzarote are being analyzed.
Link with Africa
The president of the Cabildo, Pedro San Ginés, stressed that "this finding reopens the debate and old theories and hypotheses about the link between Lanzarote and the African continent, since there is no evidence of ostriches on the islands that emerged from the oceanic crust, as is the case of Lanzarote, except in the large ones that have been part of a continent, such as Australia, New Zealand, which are configured from a process of drift of a continental part".
For his part, the Councilor for the area, Juan Antonio de la Hoz, has highlighted the work carried out this year in this and the other two important excavations carried out by the Cabildo of Lanzarote, such as the Mission in search of the Tower of Lancelloto Malochello or the excavation of Fiquinineo, in order to "that the Cabildo continues to investigate - jointly with the Government of the Canary Islands and other institutions - more data about our island, disseminate this archaeological and paleontological heritage among the population, to conserve and protect it through its use and the dissemination of knowledge".
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