Dinosaur crouching like a chick in an egg

It is likely 72 million years old and is still perfectly preserved: In a fossilized egg, researchers have found a dinosaur embryo that assumed an unusual pose.

He was christened “Baby Yingliang” and is believed to be between 72 and 66 million years old: the amazing, well-preserved skeleton of a dinosaur fetus in a fossilized egg provided new insights into the evolution of primitive animals. The baby oviraptosaurus took a crouching position that was previously known only in birds, as revealed by a study conducted by a Chinese-British research team, and its results In the specialized magazine “iScience” to be submitted.

Researchers are now wondering if this behavior evolved during the Cretaceous period between 145 and 66 million years ago in the dinosaurs known as theropods, from which birds later emerged. “We were surprised to see this beautifully preserved embryo in a bird-like position in a dinosaur egg,” said Wisum Ma of the University of Birmingham.

The fossil dinosaur embryo comes from the Chinese city of Ganzhou in southern China’s Jiangxi Province and has slept undetected in a camp since the turn of the millennium.

It was only a decade ago that staff at the Yingliang Stone Museum of Natural History identified as many fossils as dinosaur eggs and discovered bones that have now been examined in one of them, according to Lida Xing of the University of Earth Sciences in Beijing. The offspring of the discovered dinosaurs was christened “Baby Yingliang”. The fossil will now be further investigated.

dpa