The perfectly preserved dinosaur embryo was found 66 million years ago Wildlife News

The beautifully preserved embryo found in China was like a chicken preparing to hatch from its egg.

Scientists have announced the discovery of a superbly preserved dinosaur embryo from 66 million years ago, which was preparing to hatch like an egg.

The fossil was found in Ganzhou, southern China, and was named after a toothless theropod or oviraptorosaurus dinosaur named “Baby Yingliang” by researchers.

“It’s one of the best dinosaur embryos ever found,” Fion Waisum Ma, a researcher at the University of Birmingham, who wrote a paper in the journal iScience, told AFP on Tuesday.

Ma and colleagues found Baby Yingliang’s head under her body, her feet on both sides and her back curled, an attitude not previously seen in dinosaurs, but similar to modern birds.

In birds, behavior is controlled by the central nervous system and is called “tucking”. The chicks, which are ready to start, stick their heads under the right wing while they break the shell with a beak to stabilize the head.

Embryos that do not hatch are more likely to die after an unsuccessful hatching.

“This indicates that this behavior of modern birds evolved and originated among their dinosaur ancestors,” said Ma.

The alternative to insertion could be something closer to what is seen in modern crocodiles, and instead of sitting, they take a sitting position until their head is bent over their chest.

Forgotten in storage

Oviraptorosaurs, meaning “lizard thugs”, were feathered dinosaurs that lived in Asia and North America in the late Cretaceous.

They had a variable beak shape and diet, ranging from modern turkeys at the lower end to eight feet long to giant Gigantoraptor.

Baby Yingliang measures a length of about 27 cm (10.6 inches) from head to tail and is housed inside a 17 cm (6.6 inches) long egg at the Yingliang Stone Nature History Museum.

Researchers believe that 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 predators during the eruption.

It would have been two or three meters (6.5-9.8 feet) long if it had lived until adulthood, and would have fed on plants.

The grain was one of the fossil eggs that had been forgotten for decades.

The research team suspected that they may have contained unborn dinosaurs, and removed part of Baby Yingliang’s eggshell to find the embryo hidden inside.

“This dinosaur embryo inside its egg is one of the most beautiful fossils I’ve ever seen,” said University of Edinburgh Professor Steve Brusatte of the research team in a statement.

“This little prenatal dinosaur looks like a bird curled up in its egg, which is further evidence that many of today’s bird traits evolved into dinosaur ancestors.”

The team hopes to study Baby Yingliang in more detail, using advanced scanning techniques, to see the full picture of the skeleton, including its skull bones, because part of the body is still covered in rocks.