Sauropods are the most extreme example of a body-to-baby ratio in nature. The biggest sauropods weighed up to 100 tons. The eggs they hatched from? About the size of a basketball - give or take.
The biggest verified dinosaur egg yet found is about 24 cm (10 inches) across. Sauropod mothers laid them in big groups - 20, 30, sometimes 40 eggs in a buried clutch - and then walked away. They didn’t sit on the nest like a chicken. The mother was simply too heavy. Anything she stepped on, she’d crush.
Newborns hatched out and had to fend for themselves immediately. The lucky ones who survived predators grew fast, putting on weight as quickly as today’s blue whales. Within a few decades, that pebble-sized hatchling could be the size of a small building.
