Science News Roundup: Baby dragons take their bow in a Slovenian cave; Fossils from Mongolia, Argentina show some dinosaurs and more

The official website for the Beidou network said in a statement that problems were detected during pre-launch tests of the Long March-3B booster and that the new launch date would be determined later.

Following is a summary of current science news briefs.

Baby dragons take their bow in a Slovenian cave

Three rare aquatic creatures known as baby dragons are going on display in an aquarium at Slovenia's Postojna Cave, one of the country's biggest tourist attractions. The cave-dwelling animals, officially called proteus or olms, have pale pink skin, no eyesight, a long thin body and four legs. They live only in the waters of dark caves of the southern European Karst region.

Fossils from Mongolia, Argentina show some dinosaurs laid soft-shelled eggs

Scientists have unearthed the first fossils of soft-shelled eggs laid by dinosaurs - two disparate species from Argentina and Mongolia - in a discovery suggesting that the earliest dinosaurs produced such eggs before some lineages turned to hard shells. The embryo-containing eggs - leathery on the outside rather than hard and calcified like those of birds - belonged to a dinosaur from Patagonia called Mussaurus from about 200 million years ago and one called Protoceratops from the Gobi Desert from about 75 million years ago, researchers said on Wednesday.

China postpones Beidou satellite launch over technical problem

China indefinitely postponed on Tuesday the launch of the final satellite of its Beidou navigation network because of technical problems in the rocket meant to launch it into orbit. The official website for the Beidou network said in a statement that problems were detected during pre-launch tests of the Long March-3B booster and that the new launch date would be determined later. It did not offer specifics on the problems or the launch date.

Antarctica's 'deflated football' fossil is world's second-biggest egg

A mysterious 68-million-year-old fossil found on Seymour Island off Antarctica's coast that looked like a deflated football has turned out to be a unique find - the second-largest egg on record and one that may have belonged to a huge marine reptile that lived alongside the dinosaurs. The fossilized egg - measuring 8 by 11 inches (29 by 20 cm) - is only slightly smaller than eggs of Madagascar's giant flightless elephant birds that went extinct only in the past several centuries, scientists said on Wednesday.