SOA record obscurity

Question

Why do SOA records use a '.' instead of an '@' for contact email addresses?

Answer 1

Because the @ is not a valid character for use in DNS names.

Answer 2

A line typically found in a BIND zone file might look something like this:

@ IN SOA ns1.mydomain.com. administrator.mydomain.com. (

Alowing @ in the email address would make parsing unnecessarily difficult and error prone.