The most complete dinosaur embryo shows a baby dino tucked into a position akin to the present time's unhatched chickens.
A National Geographic report said it appears, the discovery, nearly ready for bursting free from its shell, "curled up so tightly" its head tucked in the middle of its toes.
However, a strange occurrence buried the egg before the tiny creature ever took its first breath, having the unhatched animal preserved for tens of millions of years in now-called southern China.
Specifically, The Yingliang Group stone mining company found the egg in 2000. However, it took another decade and a half before anyone realized the substantial discovery.
In 2015, a museum staff examined the fossil egg and noticed what appeared to be bones inside it. The fragile bones were exposed by a crack in the surface of the egg at it "hinted at the prize inside."
The Most Complete Dinosaur Embryo Discovered
This week's report of scientists that came out in the iScience cuddled up under the dimpled surface of the fossil egg, is one of the most complete embryos dinosaur ever discovered.
According to Darla Zelenitsky, study author and a paleontologist at the University of Calgary who specializes in dinosaur eggs, she couldn't believe her eyes as it is quite perfectly preserved.
Named Baby Yingliang, the infant dinosaur came from rocks approximately 70 million years old. However, its exact age remains uncertain.
A Type of Oviraptorosaur
The newly discovered embryo belongs to a group of beaked theropod dinosaurs called oviraptorosaurs, detailed in the Dinopedia site. They are closely linked to modern birds that existed roughly 130 million to 66 million years back.
These creatures have similar traits with their avian relatives, and the embryo hits at another one, a position for curled pre-hatching one.
Head of paleontology at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, Lindsay Zanno, said it is remarkable to "get a glimpse into the very first stages of life of animals that existed over 70 million years ago.
Zanno, an NC State University researcher, added that the evidence that birds are "living theropod dinosaurs" is overwhelming.
Pill-Shaped Egg
The egg is a little longer than an ostrich egg, although it is pill-shaped, and its surface was fractured, enabling a worker to see a few bits of one.
According to Waisu Ma, a study author and a doctoral researcher at the United Kingdom's University of Birmingham, "At that moment, he realized an embryo might be inside."
A technician carefully chipped one side of the fossil away and cleared out some of the sediment filling the egg to show the baby dinosaur curled up in death as it would have been in life.
Realizing the importance of the discovery, Yingliang reached out to Lida Xing from the China University of Geosciences in Beijing and the study's lead author, who started forming a team to examine the exquisitely preserved young dinosaur.
Matthew Lamana, a Pittsburgh-based Cargenie Museum of Natural History paleontologist, said that while many dinosaur eggs have been discovered, embryos are rare; and well-preserved embryos are even more uncommon.
He added, "They are mostly these jumbles of bones at the bottom of an egg." Only two other almost complete oviraptorosaur embryos have yet been discovered.
Report about the new find is shown on Nature Spot Entertainment's YouTube video below:
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