Dinosaur eggs are found all throughout the planet, but those that contain embryos are exceedingly rare. This severely limits our understanding of dinosaur evolution, which is why palaeontologists have so many questions to solve.
A new dinosaur embryo fossil discovered in China's southern Jiangxi region may be able to assist in this endeavour.
On May 8, 2022, scientists from the Fujian Science and Technology Museum and the China University of Geosciences announced the finding in a report co-authored by specialists from China and Canada and published in the journal BMC Ecology and Evolution.
The researchers believe the fossil belongs to the hadrosaurus species, also known as duck-billed dinosaurs, based on its traits. While this isn't the first time such an embryo has been discovered, the Ying Baby is by far the best-preserved.
A clutch of subspherical dinosaur eggs was discovered lately during blasting for a construction project in the Upper Cretaceous red beds (Hekou Formation) of the Ganzhou Basin, Jiangxi Province, China, according to the researchers. The researchers noted in the report, "At least two of the eggs contain recognisable hadrosauroid embryos, documented here for the first time."
The embryo has been named the "Ying Baby" by the Yingliang Stone Natural History Museum in East China's Fujian Province, and the egg is an ellipsoid with a diameter of roughly 9 cm. The low size of both the egg and embryo suggests that duck-billed dinosaurs had small eggs and late body development as a fundamental trait, which is one of the most important new pieces of knowledge this find provides on dinosaur biology.
The same team discovered a branch of embryo fossils in December 2021, including an oviraptorosaur embryo fossil. The embryo fossils, which are extremely rare finds because most of them fade away inside their eggshells, could provide valuable information for the study of dinosaur reproductive development, behaviour, evolution, and paleoecology. Dinosaurs went extinct about 66 million years ago. There is still much to learn about the more than 700 known extinct dinosaur species.
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