The fossil found in southern China must be at least 66 million years old, and lies in a position not previously seen in dinosaurs.
The dinosaur embryo lies just like a chicken in its egg. The fossil was discovered in Ganzhou, southern China and belonged to a toothless theropod dinosaur, or oviraptorosaur, as scientists called “Baby Yingliang”, writes The Guardian.
“It is one of the best dinosaur embryos ever found in history,” Fion Waisum Ma, a researcher at the University of Birmingham who co-authored an article in the journal iScience, told AFP.
Ma and her colleagues saw that Baby Yingliang’s head was under her body, with her feet on either side and her back curled – an attitude previously unseen in dinosaurs, but similar to modern birds.
–Between 66 and 72 million years old
In birds, the behavior is controlled by the central nervous system and is called “tucking”. Chickens preparing for hatching place the head under the right wing to stabilize the head while breaking the shell with the beak.
Baby Yingliang measures approximately 27 cm long from head to tail and lies inside a 17 cm long egg at the Yingliang Stone Natural History Museum in China.
Scientists believe that the fossil is between 66 and 72 million years old, and was probably preserved by a sudden mudslide that buried the egg and protected it from other animals, writes The Guardian.
The dinosaur would have grown two to three meters if it had lived to grow up, and would probably have fed on plants. The sample was one of several fossil eggs that were forgotten in storage for decades, the newspaper writes.
– One of the most beautiful fossils I have seen
The research team suspected that the egg could contain unborn dinosaurs, and scraped off part of Baby Yingliang’s eggshell to uncover the embryo hidden in the egg.
– This dinosaur embryo inside the egg is one of the most beautiful fossils I have ever seen, says Professor Steve Brusatte at 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 the entire skeleton, including the skull bones, because parts of the body are still covered in stone.
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