A group of fossils were uncovered in Ganzhou, Jiangxi province, China, in 2000. They were delivered to a museum where they were stored. Only in 2015 did a researcher notice that a fossil dinosaur egg had a crack that revealed an embryo inside, developed to just days short of hatching. The 66 million-year-old dinosaur was an oviraptorosaur, a type of dinosaur that would evolve into birds. And the embryo, named "Baby Yingliang," shows many birdlike features. These include a beak, egg teeth used to break out of a shell, a hard shell, and embryonic feathers. Baby Yingliang was still a dinosaur, however, as it had front claws instead of wings. A feature not previously seen in embryonic dinosaur fossils is the "head tucking" posture found in embryonic birds.
Baby Yingliang is an amazing find, as dinosaur embryos are quite rare. A team of scientists from China, Canada, and the UK published their findings in the journal iScience. Read more about Baby Yingliang and what it tells us about dinosaurs and the birds they became at NBC.
(Images credit: Lida Xing et al., 2021)