Jurassic Jungle?!
- 1st Apr 2018
Please note that this story is an April Fool!
Following March’s battering from ‘the beast from the east’ our gardeners have been undertaking a plant survey to identify any damaged plantings after the icy blast and snow. Whilst surveying the Heligan Jungle, they ventured onto the small island in the middle of the Jungle pond and made a surprising and unidentified discovery!
Nestled between the unfurling leaves of giant gunnera and below a large palm the gardeners discovered a beautifully constructed and unusual nest of very large blue eggs; the likes of which they have never seen before.
“To be honest, I nearly stepped right into the nest as it is on the ground! Luckily, I spotted the cluster of large blue eggs just before my size 7 boots created an omelette! I’ve worked at the gardens for 16 years and have never seen anything like this, so we immediately called our Wildlife Officer Claire to come and investigate.” – Cindy Maddison, Jungle Supervisor
Our Wildlife Officer Claire confirmed that the eggs and nest were highly unusual and that she also had never seen anything like it before. More importantly, Claire revealed that a number of unusual sightings in the Jungle had been reported to her by visitors over the last month.
“I have received at least three sightings from visitors of an unusual large creature that had been spotted along the boardwalk and at the edge of the ponds. We didn’t think much of it until the eggs were discovered. The eggs were not on the island last year and we believe that they have been recently laid. We now plan to install a night vision camera to see whose nest it is” – explained Claire
Recent studies conducted on fossilised dinosaur eggs reveal that at least one dinosaur species is believed to have produced eggs of a deep blue. As many reptiles lay white unpigmented eggs, the assumption had long been that dinosaurs did too. We now know that this isn’t the case!
Like the dinosaurs, Heligan’s Tree Ferns have been around since the Mesozoic period, begging the question that could dormant eggs have been preserved somehow and that maybe there’s a dinosaur in the Heligan Jungle?
The mystery continues. . .
