The embryo belongs to the suborder theropods, from the Triassic period, and it is nestled inside the egg in a posture, with its head between its legs, that until now had only been detected in avian dinosaurs, according to the study.
“This position is very similar to that of current birds when their eggs are about to hatch and we think that the dinosaurs would have hatched from their eggs in a similar way to that of the birds of our era,” said one of the scientists, Fion Ma Wai-sum, to the Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post.
Ma explained to the newspaper that the fossil is further proof that today’s birds come from theropod dinosaurs.
We think that the dinosaurs would have hatched from their eggs in a similar way to that of the birds of our era
According to Ma, the embryo was about 17 days old and her egg would have hatched at 21 days.
The area in which the egg was found, in the municipality of Ganzhou, stands out for the many fossils, both of dinosaurs and of eggs and plants, that it houses.
The egg was bought in 2000 and spent 10 years in storage until it began to be investigated on the occasion of the founding of the Natural History Museum of Stone in the southeastern Chinese city of Xiamen, of whose collection it is part.
This team of scientists has spent three years studying the fossilly, according to Ma, the researchers will continue the analyzes, which will include X-ray techniques to learn more about the anatomy of the embryo and other parts of its body covered by stone.