Scientists have discovered a perfectly preserved embryo inside a dinosaur egg

Scientists have discovered a perfectly preserved embryo inside a dinosaur egg

Scientists have just discovered the discovery of a perfectly preserved dinosaur embryo. Like a chicken, he was preparing to hatch from an egg. Their findings are published in the journal iScience.

The embryo was found in southern China, in the area of ​​Ganzhou. It is believed that it is a toothless theropod dinosaur, the same oviraptorosaurus, named after the little Janlian. Scientists date it to at least 66 million years.

According to one of the researchers, this is one of the best dinosaur embryos ever found in history. The paleontologist who participated in the study states that the embryo was on the verge of hatching.

The discovery also helped scientists better understand the connection between modern birds and dinosaurs: the fossil shows that the embryo is in a short position, and this is exactly what birds do shortly before hatching. As they say, this is an indication that such behavior in modern birds first originated in their ancestral dinosaurs.

Oviraptorosaurus literally means “egg-laying lizard”. These feathered dinosaurs inhabited parts of present-day Asia and North America during the Late Cretaceous, dating to about 100-66 million years ago.

The little yangli is 27 cm long from head to tail and lays 17 cm long in an egg. It is housed in the Yanlian Museum of Natural History in China.

Although the eggs were first discovered in 2000, they have been stored for 10 years. When construction work began on the museum and the rearrangement of old fossils began, scientists suspected that there was an embryo inside it, and the egg was only immediately noticed.

Some part of the dinosaur’s body is still covered with masonry, and scientists are using sophisticated scanning techniques to create an image of its entire skeleton.