A pod of fossilized bollock has been found in John Day Fossil Beds National Monument in eastern United States - central Oregon , helping to solve a whodunit of what creature had position them ( and others like them ) millions of years ago .

Eggs had previously been witness at the site , but only as somebody , and had been misidentified as ant eggs . After a nest fill with nut was discovered in 2016 , the eggs were identified as go to grasshoppers , partly due to thesimilarity in the shapeof the testis to modernistic grasshoppers , which lay them underground .

The fossil of an ootheca ( a type of egg capsule produced by stick insects , cockroaches , pray mantis , grasshoppers , and other animals ) was figure using a micro - CT image scanner , help the team to get a better look at the eggs .

dissimilar species make their oothecae in a variety of way , creating different varieties of the egg pod . Praying mantises lay egg into a frothy mass produced byglands in their stomach , which then hardens , protecting the ball .

The team found , according to the discipline , distinctive oothecae belonging to ancient grasshopper " highly unionised eggs mass comprising a large clutch sizing of about 50 slimly curved ellipsoidal ballock arranged radially in several planes is preserved , enclosed in a disc - forge stratum of cement and compact soil particles " .

Many grasshopper species , but not all , lay their eggs by inserting their abdomen into the soil , before making excretions that mix with the soil and then harden . The result is an ootheca that takes on the form of the surround soil .

" Based on the geomorphology of the overall construction and the eggs , we conclude that the specimen represents a ossified underground ootheca of the grasshoppers and locust , " the squad continued , " also know as an egg seedpod . "

The find is believe to be the sometime and most unambiguous grounds of grasshopper fuel pod , with the fossil dating back 29 million years . disjoined finds in the area indicate that populations lived stably in the neighborhood , likely supporting a range of predators in the Oligocene epoch .

The paper is write inParks Stewardship Forum .