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Mycelium-like structures found under ESEM within radial sections of fragmental dinosaur eggshells would be the endolithic fungi coexistent with dinosaur eggs in the upper part of the Late Cretaceous Hugang Formation from the Wenjiaping section of Wenxian, Danjiangkou, northwestern Hubei, Central China. The endolithic fungi selectively occurred in the bad biomineral zone within the columnar layer of the eggshells, where the crowded endolithic fungi penetrated the columnar layer at near-vertical or near-horizontal angles. The endolithic fungi are needle-like, ribbon-like and silk-like, and 5-18 μm long, 0.3-0.5 μm wide at their base, with pointed tip, and are unbranched. The hyphae are mainly composed of oxygen, carbon and calcium, and are with minor sodium, potassium, chlorine and sulfur. The en-dolithic fungi and host have the same characters in lithification, fracture and main chemical composi-tion. We suggested that the episode endolithic fungi invading dinosaur eggs may have taken place in the interval between after formation of dinosaur eggshells and before their petrifaction and that dino-saur eggs invaded by endolithic fungi would not be normally incubated or would only be incubated into venerable and pathologic baby dinosaurs to be easily to aborted and contributed to the mass extinction of the dinosaurs at the end of Cretaceous.
Mycelium-like structures found under ESEM within radial sections of fragmental dinosaur eggshells would be the endolithic fungi coexistent with dinosaur eggs in the upper part of the Late Cretaceous Hugang Formation from the Wenjiaping section of Wenxian, Danjiangkou, northwestern Hubei, Central China. The endolithic fungi for selective for in the bad biomineral zone within the columnar layer of the eggshells, where the crowded endolithic fungi penetrated the columnar layer at near-vertical or near-horizontal angles. The endolithic fungi are needle-like, ribbon-like and silk-like , and 5-18 μm long, 0.3-0.5 μm wide at their base, with pointed tip, and are unbranched. The hyphae are mainly composed of oxygen, carbon and calcium, and are with minor sodium, potassium, chlorine and sulfur. en-dolithic fungi and host have the same characters in lithification, fracture and main chemical composi-tion. We suggested that the episode endolithic fungi invading dinosaur eggs may have taken place in the interval between after formation of dinosaur eggshells and before their petrifaction and that dino-saur eggs invaded by endolithic fungi would not be either reserved or would only be incubated into pathogenic baby dinosaurs to be easily to aborted and contributed to the mass extinction of the dinosaurs at the end of Cretaceous.