The discovery of dinosaur eggs has often happened, but this time it is something very rare. The reason is, in this egg there is a fossilized baby dinosaur embryo in it in perfect shape.
Estimated to be around 72 million years old and named as Baby Yingliang, the location of the discovery is in Ganzhou City, China, and has recently been studied extensively by researchers.
Baby Yingliang belongs to a species of beaked and toothless dinosaur, known as an oviraptorosaur. The bones of baby dinosaurs are so weak and fragile that they are so rare that they can survive as fossils. So the discovery of this egg is called great luck.
Quoted from CNN, Wednesday (12/22/2021) This oviraptorosaurus was a feathered dinosaur and some of its characteristics were similar to modern birds, because birds were indeed dinosaurs.
The egg measures 17 centimeters in length and the baby dinosaur inside which is ready to hatch is 27 centimeters. Researchers believe that as adults, they are between two and three meters long.
"This is an amazing specimen. I have been working on dinosaur eggs for 25 years and have never seen anything like this before," said Darla Zelenitsky, one of the researchers from the University of Calgary, Canada.
"Before this, little was known about what went on inside dinosaur eggs before they hatched, because there were very few embryonic bones, much less complete and living," he added.
Researchers from China, Britain and Canada studied Baby Yingliang and previously discovered fossilized eggs. They concluded that the baby's movements before hatching were similar to those of baby birds.
"The dinosaur embryo in this egg is one of the most beautiful fossils I've ever seen. The baby dinosaur looks like a baby bird curled up in its egg, which is yet another proof that many of the characteristics of today's birds first evolved from their dinosaur ancestors." said Steve Brusatte of the University of Edinburgh.