China: perfectly fossilized dinosaur embryo rediscovered after years of neglect

This undated illustration, courtesy of Lida Xing and the University of Birmingham, is a replica based on the new 'Baby Yingliang' specimen found in Ganzhou, southern China.

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Text by: RFI Follow

1 min

A team of Sino-Anglo-Canadian scientists announced, Tuesday, December 21, the rediscovery of a dinosaur embryo in a very good state of preservation.

It was ready to emerge from its egg over 66 million years ago in southeast China.

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With our correspondent in Beijing,

“Baby Yingliang” - that's what scientists called him - was 27 cm.

He was 17 days old.

Three more days and he was breaking his shell.

It would have grown to two or three meters long if it had reached adulthood, and would have fed on plants.

It is a magnificent fossil, paleontologists are completely in love with it.

But what is important is the quality of its conservation.

Baby dinosaur never came out of its egg.

He was buried by a torrent of mud which protected him from scavengers.

A fossil forgotten for years

The specimen was part of a group of fossil eggs discovered in 2000 in Ganzhou, southeast China's eastern Jiangxi province, forgotten on a corner of a shelf before being re-examined today. hui.

It is part of the family of oviraptorosaurs, “egg-stealing lizards” that lived between 66 and 72 million years ago, in the Late Cretaceous, in Asia and North America.

We knew they were feathered dinosaurs.

The folded position of this exceptional embryo, typical of chicks, confirms that birds are descended from dinosaurs.

►Also read: The remains of a futalognkosaurus, the largest of the dinosaurs found in Argentina

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