Hidden away in a Chinese storage facility for ten years, a remarkably preserved dinosaur embryo has been uncovered inside a fossilized egg, shedding light on the link between modern birds and their ancient ancestors.
The 70-million-year-old baby dinosaur, named Baby Yingliang, was on the verge of hatching when the egg was buried and became stone, fossilized
According to Live Science, co-leader researcher Fion Waisum Ma of the University of Birmingham said: “It is one of the best-preserved dinosaur embryos ever reported in science,”
Researchers, exploring stones stored in the facility, stumbled upon the well-preserved specimen, its fragile bones revealed through a crack in the shell.
Baby Yingliang, found in a fetal position with its head tucked between its toes, mirrors the posture of today's unhatched chickens.
This marks the first instance of a dinosaur related to modern birds discovered in such a fetal position inside an egg. The findings, detailed in the journal Science, propose that the tucked position may be a trait inherited from dinosaurs.
“The discovery of this embryo hints that some pre-hatching behaviors e.g. tucking, which was 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 belongs to the oviraptorosaur family, a theropod dinosaur with a beak closely linked to modern birds that thrived from around 130 million to 66 million years ago.
Should Baby Yingliang have survived, researchers believed it would have reached lengths of 2 to 3 meters.
The fossilized skeleton, from snout to tail, is not only complete but also preserved in a life-like position within its egg, giving the impression of a recent demise, as stated by Darla Zelenitsky, co-researcher from the University of Calgary.
Zelenitsky said: “Before this study, we really didn’t know how dinosaurs were positioned in their eggs because previous fossil embryos were too fragmented.
“Now we can see quite nicely that oviraptorid dinosaurs had bird-like postures while incubating inside their eggs.”
