It can be recalled that a high school student has allegedly found a strange looking rock in 1965 in the city of Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi Prefecture. That said, the city, together with the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum has recently announced the confirmation of the alleged rock which turns out to be a dinosaur egg fossil. To date, it was found that eight types of fossilized dinosaur eggs have already been unearthed in Japan, in the prefectures of Fukui, Gifu and Hyogo.
As per the experts, the fossilized dinosaur egg, which has been confirmed in Yamaguchi Prefecture, is different from the other eight. Despite being broken into pieces, the city and the museum believes that the fossilized eggs is likely to be an egg laid by a bipedal carnivorous dinosaur, or theropod. In addition, it was found that the newly discovered fossil has become the earliest known discovery of a dinosaur fossil in Japan. As of writing, experts say that it has already overtook a fossil of the upper arm of a Moshiryu dinosaur found in the town of Iwaizumi, Iwate Prefecture in 1978, which has then been considered as the first dinosaur fossil discovery of the country.
Meanwhile, the rocks were allegedly collected by Yoshiharu Shimizu, a native of Shimonoseki, along with his friend in September 1965. According to the city of Katsuyama, Fukui Prefecture when Shimizu and his friend were both in second-year high school, they have probably discovered it in a layer dating back to the early Cretaceous period. Another possibility of its discovery is dated between 120 million and 100 million years ago, in the upstream area of the Ayaragi River in Shimonoseki.
Ultimately, it was found that the Fukui museum has already been working with entities including the Mine Fossil Museum, in order to identify the rocks. Shintaro Maeda, the Mayor of Shimonoseki, has revealed that the city wants to share the joy with citizens, and send the news to dinosaur fans across Japan and across the globe. Due to this exciting news, the Mayor has also expressed the city's willingness to promote tourism.