70 million-year-old baby dinosaur fossil shows a discovery like never before

Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist and professor at University of Edinburgh, and a dinosaur enthusiast, tweeted this recently:

Keep your eyes open. Something exciting will hatch tomorrow... #dinosaurs pic.twitter.com/sTC57gbjW5

— Steve Brusatte (@SteveBrusatte) December 21, 2021

So what was this? Do you want to guess?

70 million years ago, a funky looking, ostrich-like dinosaur laid a clutch of eggs. These eggs laid by the dinosaur (oviraptorosaur) never got hatched; but instead, got fossilised into the soil. 

"I couldn't believe my eyes, it is so perfectly preserved." The infant dino Baby Yingliang??,comes from rocks estimated to be 70 million years old. A type of #oviraptorosaur embryo: a group of beaked therapod #dinosaurs closely related to modern birds? https://t.co/JqDG4C2d6m pic.twitter.com/8E4onSDkJG

— Thamarasee Jeewandara (@Jeew333T) December 22, 2021

The eggs were recently found in South Eastern China. Not many embryos inside the eggs were easily identifiable, since the eggs were ancient. Except for one. That embryo is now called "Baby Yingliang". 

Welcome 'Baby Yingliang'! An oviraptorosaur embryo lying inside an egg. This little dinosaur has a bird-like prehatching posture! In the team with @LidaXing1982, @SteveBrusatte and colleagues. Open access in @iScience_CP, https://t.co/6fM0UAuLui pic.twitter.com/GbS9UiO1iN

— Fion Ma (@FionMaWS) December 21, 2021

BABY YINGLIANG

Baby Yingliang's skeleton was exquisitely preserved out of all eggs, and scientists have never seen this detailed a dinosaur embryo before. Baby Yingliang's discovery is special because it shows the baby dinosaur in a position just before it was about to hatch. And this position resembles the position of many modern-day birds, which was never known for sure all these years. Baby Yingliang put itself in a unique position where its head rested on its abdomen and its legs rested around its head. 

Our little one has just arrived. Welcome Baby Yingliang, a gorgeous fossil dinosaur embryo preserved inside its egg! You're looking here at a baby dinosaur, not too long before it would have hatched. pic.twitter.com/NtXE8XODjT

— Steve Brusatte (@SteveBrusatte) December 21, 2021

This has never been seen before or recognised in previous dinosaur embryos and is a first! This position helped the dinosaur embryos peck out of the egg on the hatching day and it is very likely that the modern birds got this behaviour from their dinosaur ancestors. As now even dinosaur embryos resemble embryos of modern-day birds, it is quite likely to be proved that modern-day birds evolved from dinosaurs.     

Isn't this a wonderful discovery?