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A perfectly preserved dinosaur embryo has been found inside a fossilized egg that was all-but-forgotten in a Chinese storage facility for 10 years.
“It is one of the best-preserved dinosaur embryos ever reported in science,” University of Birmingham co-lead researcher Fion Waisum Ma told Live Science.
The 70-million-year-old baby dinosaur, named Baby Yingliang, has shed new light on the link between modern birds and their ancient ancestors.
Baby Yingliang was almost ready to hatch before the egg was buried and turned to stone, which was unearthed by Chinese mining company Yingliang Group in 2000.
The rare find went unnoticed for more than a decade before researchers dug through stones in storage, where they noticed a few fragile bones inside the egg exposed by a crack in the shell.
It is the first time a dinosaur related to modern birds has been found curled up inside the egg in a fetal position with its head between its toes — the same as today’s unhatched chickens.
It is the first time a dinosaur related to modern birds has been found curled up inside the egg in a fetal position. Lida Xing via REUTERSNow scientists have suggested the tuck is a trait descended from dinosaurs, in the journal iScience published on Tuesday.
“The discovery of this embryo hints that some pre-hatching behaviors e.g. tucking, which were previously considered unique to birds, may be rooted more deeply in dinosaurs many tens or hundreds of millions of years ago,” Ma said.
Baby Yingliang is a type of oviraptorosaur, which was a beaked therapod dinosaur closely related to modern birds that lived about 130 million to 66 million years ago.
Researchers believe if Baby Yingliang had survived it would have grown to between 2 and 3 meters long.
Baby Yingliang is a type of oviraptorosaur that lived about 130 million to 66 million years ago. Lida Xing via REUTERS“This skeleton is not only complete from the tip of the snout to the end of its tail, it is curled in a life pose within its egg as if the animal died just yesterday,” University of Calgary co-researcher Darla Zelenitsky said.
“Before this study, we really didn’t know how dinosaurs were positioned in their eggs because previous fossil embryos were too fragmented.
The fossil was unearthed by Chinese mining company Yingliang Group in 2000. Lida Xing via REUTERS“Now we can see quite nicely that oviraptorid dinosaurs had bird-like postures while incubating inside their eggs.”
The same kind of dinosaurs is known to have sat on their eggs to incubate them just like modern birds, according to Zelenitsky.
