The most well-preserved dinosaur embryo ever discovered is contained in a 70 million-year-old oviraptorosaur egg that was forgotten in a Chinese museum storeroom.
Life 21 December 2021.
By Alice Klein.
The embryo was curled up in the egg.
The paper is titled "Xing et al., 2021."
The most well-preserved dinosaur embryo ever found is in southern China.
A staff member at a museum in China noticed bones sticking out of the shell of a dinosaur egg that had been in a storeroom for more than a decade.
The museum contacted us to look at the egg because it was an important specimen. We were surprised to see the embryo intact.
There is a new species of dinosaur found on the Isle of Wight.
The skeleton of the dinosaur is wrapped around the egg and tucked into its body. The egg is long and wide.
The features of the skeleton suggest that it is a two-legged dinosaur.
The egg is about 66 million years old. Ma says that it was probably buried quickly in sand or mud. She says that it is very rare to find dinosaur embryos intact.
Modern birds use a tucked posture to protect themselves for hatching. Ma says the posture first evolved in dinosaurs, not in modern birds. She says that they have never had embryos well-preserved before.
A dinosaur embryo is close to hatching.
The person is Lida Xing.
The egg was donated to the museum in 2000 after it was found in Shahe Industrial Park in southern China. Ma thinks it was related to construction work.
The journal iScience has a reference.
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