How to make simple edible prehistoric dinosaur eggs using natural dyes

What colour were dinosaur eggs?

A simple enough question. It seemed easy to answer but did not yield the answer I expected. It did send us down a rabbit hole of discovery and egg-sperimentation. And resulted in these fun edible prehistoric dinosaur eggs coloured with natural egg dyes.

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Everything your little dinosaur fan is likely to want to know about inosaur eggs

Did dinosaurs lay eggs?

Yes. As far as we know, all dinosaur young hatch from eggs, although fossilised eggs with dinosaur embryos inside are rare finds.

Eggshells from hatched eggs fossilise well. Unhatched eggs (and young dinosaurs) were a welcome feast for small carnivores. Fossilised eggs are rare. Fossilised eggs with an embryo inside are even rarer. In most cases, if the eggs did manage to survive, bacteria would break down the embryo inside before it could fossilise.

Dinosaurs can be quite huge. Did dinosaurs lay big eggs?

Some may have, but the bigger the egg, the thicker the shell needs to be to support the embryo and maintain its shape (when dropped from a height of about 2 m ). But the shell must not be so thick that the baby dinosaur can’t hatch.

Because few dinosaur embryos have been found, it’s often difficult to tell what type of dinosaur laid any eggs we find.

The largest eggs so far found were made by large sauropods. These were shaped like a football and were about 30 cm wide (1 foot) and 25 cm wide (10 inches). In comparison, Mussaurus lay tiny eggs, only 2.5 cm (1 inch) long.

What shape were dinosaur eggs?

They came in different shapes. Some were spherical, while others were elongated (about 3 times as long as they were wide) and various shapes in between. Some elongated eggs are symmetrical while others were rounded at one end and more pointed at the other, like a bird egg today.

For the record, Maiasaura laid eggs like grapefruit.

How many eggs did dinosaurs lay?

From the eggs we have discovered, sauropods lay around 5 eggs in a row, as if the mother laid the eggs while walking.

We know much more about Maiasaura eggs, due to a discovery of 40 nests, with eggs at Egg Mountain. Maiasaura laid around 15 to 25 grapefruit and sometimes 30 to 40 eggs in nests that had been scooped out of the ground.

How many eggs did T-Rex lay? We don’t know because we’ve never found T-Rex eggs. Tyrannosaurus’ relatives laid around 20 elongated eggs.

What colour were dinosaur eggs?

I wrongly assumed we did not know what colour 66 million-year-old dinosaur eggs were. For camouflage, I assumed they would most likely be a shade of brown.

In 2018, scientists used microspectroscopy on egg fragments to detect two pigments, blue-green biliverdin and red-brown protoporphyrin, which also colour modern bird eggshells.

Deinonychus eggs were blue-green in colour. Troodons had blue-green, beige or white eggshells. Heyuannia, an oviraptor that lived in what is now China, were deep blue-green. And most of the dinosaur eggs had speckling patterns on them!

No pigment was detected in the fossilised eggshells of any of the sauropods that were tested. Maiasaura eggs also did not contain any pigment.

Can we make edible prehistoric dinosaur eggs?

Once we’d found out so much information about eggs, our LDA wanted to make some. As it is so close to Easter, I was happy to oblige.

Option 1: An egg mould

We own an egg mould that turns boiled eggs into dinosaur heads. We were very sceptical, but it works quite well. You can definitely tell it’s a dinosaur.

It would be fun to make these for a birthday party, but if you only have one mould, it will take forever. Each egg has to be boiled, then sit in the saucepan, then dunked in cold water, then peeled and put in the mould for 15 minutes.

Option 2: Century eggs

Century eggs, AKA thousand-year-old eggs, millennium eggs and black eggs are a Chinese dish that preserves duck, chicken or quail eggs in clay, ash, salt, quicklime and rice hulls.

The yolk turns dark green to grey while the egg white turns into a brown, translucent jelly.

Century eggs did not appeal to our LDA, nor did we have the ingredients or time to make them.

Option 3: Chinese tea egg-inspired edible prehistoric dinosaur eggs

While searching for inspiration we came across Chinese tea eggs, which our LDA declared “looked quite old.”

A quick search revealed Chinese tea eggs coloured with egg dye to make beautiful marbled dinosaur eggs. Our LDA immediately wanted to make some.

I wanted to see if we could make these edible prehistoric dinosaur eggs using natural egg dyes.

How to make edible prehistoric dinosaur eggs using natural egg dyes

The first step to making edible prehistoric dinosaur eggs is deciding which natural egg dyes to use.

There are lots to choose from and some you probably already have in your cupboards, fridge or garden. We’d already tested some dyes and were eager to try some new colours.

Natural egg dyes

• Beetroot: Should turn eggs a lovely pink. Ours always ends up a mushroom colour. Our LDA has not given up hope of a nice pink
• Red onion skins: A dark reddy brown
• Yellow onion skins: Orange.
• Turmeric: Yellow. It does not matter whether you use fresh or powdered turmeric
• Spinach or parsley: Pale green
• Red cabbage: This turns eggs a lovely blue colour. We’ve used it numerous times and it has never failed us.
• Hibiscus tea: (Like Red Zinger) This supposedly results in a lovely purple. I would like to try using hibiscus tea as a natural egg dye one day.
• Blueberries: Dark blue (though you do need a lot of blueberries)
• Tea: brown, like the Chinese tea eggs, ditto coffee

You can also get some lovely colours by mixing dyes, like turmeric then red cabbage for a nice green, or mix onion skins.

This time we chose red cabbage and beetroot again and decided to try turmeric and red onion skins as well.

We used pre-cooked beetroot (not pickled), which probably accounted for the brownish-pink of our eggs. Fresh beetroot just was not available. The inside was pale pink, much to our LDA’s delight.

In contrast, we used fresh turmeric because we found some at our local supermarket and our LDA wanted to try it. The smell while cooking was interesting. Curiously, while the egg was a vibrant yellow, the marbling was disappointing and barely existent.

If you prefer to use powdered turmeric, take 2 tablespoons of turmeric in 1 cup of boiling water and add a tablespoon of vinegar. Mix and set aside.

The cabbage produced some beautiful blue marbling. However, much of the marbling peeled off with the eggshell (our egg had a large air bubble just below the surface).

The best results came from our red onion skins. The eggs were a rich reddy-brown and the marbling was beautiful (None of the marbling photographs well).

And no. It does not matter what natural egg dye you use, it does not affect the taste of the egg.

What you’ll need to make these edible prehistoric dinosaur eggs

These edible prehistoric dinosaur eggs are very simple to make and you need so few things to make them. You probably have most of these things in your cupboard, depending on the dye you wish to use.

This makes them a great recipe to make with your little dinosaur fan and an easy one for you to make for them for some Easter or lunchtime fun.

You’ll need:

• Boiled eggs. It does not matter if they are white or brown or even blue-green like dinosaurs because you will remove the shell anyway.
• Your chosen ingredient(s) to make your dye
• White vinegar
• Water
• A saucepan
• A sieve or slotted spoon
• A spoon or tongs to take the eggs out of the dye
• A glass jar to place the eggs and dye in while dying (optional)
• Paper towel or newspaper.

Can you make these marbled dinosaur eggs in advance?

Yes, but not too far in advance.

The eggs will need to sit in the dye for at least 8 hours or overnight for optimal results. You should therefore make the eggs the day before.

Boiled eggs will stay fresh for around one week in the fridge in an airtight container. Cracking the eggshell to get the marbled effect will reduce their shelf life to four or five days, again in an airtight container.

Save (a little) time: Cook your eggs a week in advance and store them in your fridge then crack and dye the eggs the evening before your event.

A science experiment in a recipe

There are two good reasons to make some of these eggs, whether for Easter, a dinosaur birthday party, school lunch boxes or a relaxed Sunday brunch:

1. These edible prehistoric dinosaur eggs are incredibly simple to make and require almost no active participation to make them. Really, you just have to leave them to do their thing and change colour.
2. Making these marbled dinosaur eggs using natural egg dyes is a great way to teach your little dinosaur fan about vegetable dyes and colourants and how they work. And what you need to make eggs the same colour as real dinosaur eggs.

Will there be dinosaur eggs at your Easter table?

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