Exquisitely Preserved Dinosaur Embryo Discovered In Fossilized Egg

 

The adorable Baby Yingliang. Credit: Lida Xing

A delicately preserved dinosaur embryo has been discovered in a fossilized egg.

 

The sample was found in Ganzhou, southern China, and is one of the most complete dinosaur embryos ever discovered.

 

The embryo has been named Baby Yingliang and it is believed to be 72 to 66 million years old.

 

The skeleton led scientists to conclude it was an oviraptorid, which is mainly a two-legged birdy type of dinosaur.

 

The egg is 17cm-long and 8cm-wide, and the skeleton is 24cm in length.

 

Baby Yingliang was first discovered in Shahe Industrial Park in 2000 and donated to Yingliang Stone Natural History Museum, in Nan'an.

 

If you're pondering why you're only hearing about it now, that's because the egg was assembling dust in a store room until 2015, when a staff member noted bones sticking out of the shell.

 

Detecting the contents of the egg could be worth exploring, they contacted researchers at the University of Birmingham, who have just published a study about their discoveries.

 

How the baba may have looked 70 million years ago. Credit: Lida Xing

Fion Waisum Ma, joint first author and PhD scientist at the University of Birmingham, told: "Dinosaur embryos are very 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 good condition and helps us solve a lot of questions about dinosaur growth and reproduction with it.

 

"It is curious to see this dinosaur embryo and a chicken embryo posture in a similar way inside the egg, which probably indicates similar prehatching behaviours."

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