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 <a href="https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(21)01487-5">their findings in the journal iScience</a>. Read more about <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/perfectly-preserved-dinosaur-egg-highlights-link-modern-birds-rcna9425">Baby Yingliang</a> and what it tells us about dinosaurs and the birds they became at NBC.&nbsp; (Images credit: Lida Xing et al., 2021)#dinosaur #fossil #embryo #dinosauregg