An egg with a perfectly preserved dinosaur embryo. It is the exceptional discovery made in southern China. According to the Guardian, the fossil was found in Ganzhou and belonged to a toothless theropod dinosaur, or oviraptorosaur, which the researchers dubbed ‘Baby Yingliang’. It is a dinosaur similar to a bird, the embryo measures approximately 27cm in length from head to tail and lies inside a 17cm long egg at the Yingliang Stone Natural History Museum.
Researchers believe the creature dates back to between 72 and 66 million years and was probably preserved from a mudslide that buried the egg. It would have grown to two or three meters if it had become an adult and probably would have fed on plants.
‘This dinosaur embryo inside its egg is one of the most beautiful fossils I have ever seen,’ Professor Steve Brusatte of the University of Edinburgh, part of the research team, told The Guardian. “This little prenatal dinosaur looks just like a little bird curled up in its egg, which is further evidence that many features of today’s birds first evolved into their dinosaur ancestors.”
The team hopes to study Baby Yingliang in more detail using advanced scanning techniques to visualize the entire skeleton, including the skull bones, because part of the body is still covered in rock.
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