The fossil of a dinosaur sitting on a nest of eggs with embryos inside was unearthed in an early discovery of this type that sheds light on how the creatures incubated their young.
The skeletal remains of an oviraptorosaur – a bird-like beast that roamed the Earth more than 66 million years ago – were found in 70 million-year-old rocks excavated in Ganzhou, China, according to a report published in the journal Science Bulletin.
The partially preserved feathered dinosaur had been incubating a nest of 24 eggs, seven of which contained the skeletal remains of developing babies, paleontologists reported in the report.
The pioneering discovery is a sign that oviraptorosaurs sat in nests like their current aviation cousins, rather than protecting eye claws like alligators and other reptiles.
“This type of discovery, essentially fossilized behavior, is the rarest of the rare in dinosaurs,” said Matthew Lamanna of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who authored the study in a statement. of press. “Although some adult oviraptorids have previously been found in the nests of their eggs, no embryos have ever been found within those eggs.”
Scientists ruled out the possibility that the dinosaur had died during egg laying due to the late phase of the embryos. They also explored the eggs with an oxygen isotope, which showed they were incubated at high temperatures, just as birds have not yet hatched.
The researchers also found that the embryos were at different stages of development, suggesting the presence of “asynchronous hatching,” an incubation method that may have evolved into oviraptorid dinosaurs and some birds over time.
“This dinosaur was a worried father who finally gave his life while caring for his children,” Lamanna concluded in the report.
Other researchers hailed the discovery of fossils as an advance of Jurassic proportions.
“It is extraordinary to think how much biological information is captured only in this fossil,” the paleontology of vertebrate Xing Xu of the Beijing Chinese Academy of Sciences said in a press release. “We will learn from this specimen for many years to come.”
The report does not state the size of the fossilized dinosaurs or their eggs, but oviraptorosaurs range in size from a turkey to one larger than an elephant.