It's a long way 'till Easter Sunday, but the Florida Museum of Natural History is holding one egg hunt that doesn't involve a single painted chicken egg.

The museum recently opened its newest exhibit, “Hatching the past: The great dinosaur egg hunt,” a hands-on display where visitors can see and touch a collection of 100 authentic dinosaur eggs from around the world.

The collection includes a real hadrosaur (duck-billed dinosaur) nest and eggs from China and a  75 million-year old egg of titanosaur the size of a bowling ball. The titanosaurs is a group of dinosaurs that lived in present-day Argentina and includes some of the heaviest creatures ever to walk the earth.

“When most of us think of dinosaurs, we think of the fully grown adults,” said a representative from the museum.  “This exhibit showcases the amazing science of dinosaur eggs...and the remarkable stories these fossilized eggs reveal about dinosaur life. It’s an Alice-in-Wonderland experience..."

Aside from dinosaur bones, reconstructed nests, hands-on exploration stations, the exhibit also features video presentations with well-known dinosaur experts. The Florida Museum will display the exhibit through January 7, 2007.

Dinosaur eggs are not new. They have been known for thousands of years, although nobody knew what they were back then. They were mostly used for jewellery and shaping ornaments. 

The first modern-day discovery of dinosaur eggshell was in 1859 from southern France. The fossil eggs were thought to belong to giant birds because of their large size. When more complete eggs were found later, scientists assumed they were from a giant crocodile. They have been identified correctly as oviraptor eggs.