In a first, Scientists on Tuesday have discovered a whole preserved at least 70 million years old dinosaur embryo that was old enough to hatch out any time, then. The fossil of the dinosaur embryo has been discovered in Ganzhou, of Southern China, and belonged to a toothless theropod dinosaur, or oviraptorosaur, which the researchers dubbed “Baby Yingliang.”
“It is one of the best dinosaur embryos ever found in history,” University of Birmingham researcher Fion Waisum Ma, who co-authored a paper in the journal iScience, told AFP.
Here, Oviraptorosaurs means “egg thief lizards,” were feathered dinosaurs that lived in what is now Asia and North America during the Late Cretaceous period. They had very distinctive features that included variable beak shapes and sizes up to eight meters (26 feet) long.
Currently, “Baby Yingliang” measures around 27 centimeters (10.6 inches) long from head to tail, and lies inside a 17 centimeter-long egg at the Yingliang Stone Nature History Museum.
“Dinosaur embryos are some of the rarest fossils and most of them are incomplete with the bones dislocated. We are very excited about the discovery of Baby Yingliang – it is preserved in a great condition and helps us answer a lot of questions about dinosaur growth and reproduction with it,” said Fion Waisum Ma.
“It is interesting to see this dinosaur embryo and a chicken embryo pose in a similar way inside the egg, which possibly indicates similar prehatching behaviours,” he added.
What researchers believe Researchers believe?
As per them, the creature is between 72 and 66 million years old and was probably preserved by a sudden mudslide that buried the egg, protecting it from scavengers for eons. It would have grown two to three meters long if it had lived to be an adult, and would have likely fed on plants.
They further suspected that the egg might contain an unborn dinosaur, and they scraped off part of Baby Yingliang’s eggshell to uncover the embryo hidden within.
“This little prenatal dinosaur looks just like a baby bird curled in its egg, which is yet more evidence that many features characteristic of today’s birds first evolved in their dinosaur ancestors,”said Professor Steve Brusatte of the University of Edinburgh, part of the research team, in a statement.
The team hopes to study Baby Yingliang in greater detail using advanced scanning techniques to image its full skeleton, including its skull bones, because part of the body is still covered by rock.
