A sensational find, discovered almost unintentionally. Remains of a dinosaur egg found in southern China, which was estimated to have been laid about 72 million years ago and contained an almost complete fossil, may shed light on anything related to dinosaur evolution and the connection of the rare find to modern birds.
Over the last 100 years, many fossilized dinosaur eggs have been found, but finding one with a well-kept embryo inside it is considered an extremely rare case. A group of researchers discovered the finds in southern China and pointed to the position of the ubiquitorosaurus, a bird-like dinosaur that walked on both legs, inside the egg before hatching from it, which also resembled that of birds before hatching. “Most dinosaur embryos do not remain intact and their skeleton is dismantled. We were surprised to see that the embryo is well preserved inside the egg, with most of its body intact and so is part of the tail, in a position typical of a bird before hatching. About the evolution of dinosaurs throughout history, “said Ph.D. Weiss, a doctoral student at the University of Birmingham in the UK, who is part of the research team.
The swamp through which the fossilized dinosaur passes comes from Ganzhou, a city in Jiangxi Province in southern China. It was found in its entirety in 2000 by Liang Liu, director of a mining company called Yingliang Group, housed for over a decade at the local Hingliang Stone Natural History Museum, until seven crates were sorted, one of the workers noticed bones protruding through the cracked shell.
The management of the museum has contacted the team of experts from the University of Birmingham, whose findings are now being published. “The museum staff identified them as dinosaur eggs and saw some protruding bones between the cracks in the swamp,” said Lida Xing of the University of China Geographic Sciences in Beijing, who was approached by the research team. After exposing the fetus with careful opening of the egg, it was decided to give it the name ‘Baby Ingliang’. The length of the fetus is about 27 cm from the head to the tail.
In the new study, Xing and colleagues report that the head bends toward the body, with both feet on either side, so that the fetus is literally arched inside the egg. This pose reminded the research team of the pose of modern birds, such as chickens, which may indicate that modern birds developed this pattern of behavior from dinosaurs tens of millions of years ago. It is now possible to investigate the notion that the behavior in the pre-hatching stage of the egg originates from that of a dinosaur, but further research of this rare specimen is needed in depth, using various imaging techniques to simulate its internal anatomy, such as skull bones and other body parts still Covered in rocks.
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