We tend to think that we pretty much know everything there is to know about our past and those creatures that wandered our planet before us, but that’s not far from reality, there is still much more to know. Proof of this is the recent discovery of a fossilized dinosaur egg that has an almost perfectly preserved embryo. This discovery is shedding new light on evolution itself.
This is the most complete dinosaur embryos ever found in history and what’s even more impressive is that according to its posture, it seems it was very close to hatching. This egg is dated from at least 66 million years ago, and what’s surprising to scientists is the resemblance this species has with modern birds in embryonic terms.
The egg was found in 2000 by the mining company Yingliang Group in China. However, due to the sediments around it, they believed it was a stone. 15 years later, they realized the stone had a crack suggesting this was not a stone but an actual fossil. It was immediately sent to the University of Geosciences in Beijing to be studied. The Yingliang company was planning on opening a national history museum with some other pieces they had found, but seeing the importance of this egg they decided to contact Lida Xing from the university, who became the leader of the research.
After years of studying the piece, and several difficulties to prevent the piece from breaking, they discovered that tucked position that’s so characteristic of embryo birds that are about to hack. According to the recently published study at the journal iScience, the embryo is an oviraptorosaur, a beaked therapod that is linked to modern birds. These creatures lived around 130 to 66 million years ago.
It’s still unknown what happened that prevented the baby dinosaur from hatching, but what is known is that the conditions around it were so special that allowed almost perfect conservation of the embryo, something that’s very rare. To draw an image, there have only been found two other oviraptorosaur embryos and their conditions aren’t near to how this egg has preserved its content. Only a few parts of its skeleton are missing giving paleontologists a great image of what these species actually looked like at this very early stage.
But, as we said, what’s more revealing about this discovery is the evolutionary chain to modern birds. So far, it was only theorized on this ancient, prehistoric, link between birds and dinosaurs, but seeing that the exact position of the dinosaur embryo is the same as many modern species of birds seems to confirm that evolutionary link.
The Yingliang Group company also found what seem to be other types of eggs, so hopes are that they’re as well preserved as this one to shed more light on these ancient creatures. More importantly, discoveries like this one only prove that we’re not even close to knowing what was here before us.
Photos from: Lida Xing, University of Birmingham / iScience
