The embryo of a oviraptorosaur was found in the southern China province of Jiangxi.
The discovery of an exquisitely preserved dinosaur embryo that was about to hatch from its egg was announced by scientists on Tuesday.
The fossil was found in southern China and was called "Baby Yingliang" by the researchers.
Fion Ma, a researcher at the University of Birmingham, told Agence France-Presse that it was one of the best dinosaur embryos ever found.
Ma and colleagues found a posture that was previously unseen in dinosaurs and similar to modern birds.
The central nervous system in birds controls the behavior. The chick needs to tuck her head under her right wing in order to hatch.
There is a higher chance of death from failed hatching.
Ma said that the behavior in modern birds is related to their dinosaur ancestors.
An alternative to tuck could have been something similar to what crocodiles do, with the head resting on the chest and hatching.
The new specimen of a close-to-hatching oviraptorosaur dinosaur embryo, which is based on the new specimen 'Baby Yingliang' found in the southern China province of Jiangxi, was depicted in an illustration courtesy of Lida Xing and University of Birmingham.
It was forgotten in storage.
During the Late Cretaceous period, Oviraptorosaurs were feathered dinosaurs that lived in Asia and North America.
They ranged in size from small turkeys at the lower end to giant Gigantoraptors that were 26 feet long.
The baby is 27 centimeters long from head to tail and 17 centimeters long inside an egg at the museum.
The creature is thought to be between 72 and 66 million years old, and was probably preserved by a mudslide that buried the egg.
If it had lived to be an adult, it would have grown to three meters in length.
The specimen was forgotten in storage for decades.
The research team suspected they might have an unborn dinosaur, so they removed part of Baby Yingliang's egg shell.
Professor Steve Brusatte of the University of Edinburgh, part of the research team, said that the dinosaur embryo inside its egg is one of the most beautiful fossils he has ever seen.
This little dinosaur looks like a baby bird curled in its egg, which is evidence that many features of today's birds first evolved in their dinosaur ancestors.
The team hopes to use advanced scanning techniques to image the full skeleton of Baby Yingliang, which is still covered in rock.
An exquisitely preserved in-ovo theropod dinosaur embryo sheds light on avian-like prehatching postures. www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext... 2589-0042
The journal information is iScience.
2021.
A perfectly preserved dinosaur embryo was about to hatch into a bird.
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