Dinosaur egg found in China reinforces theory of link with birds

Beijing, Dec 22 (EFE).- A group of Chinese, Canadian and British scientists published an article Tuesday about a fossilized dinosaur egg found in the central Chinese province of Jiangxi that contains a 27-centimeter embryo.

The articles in the iScience journal said the elongated fossilized egg of 17 centimeters in length, is about 70 million years old and contains one of the best-preserved dinosaur embryo fossils.

The embryo belongs to the suborder theropoda, from the Triassic period, and is nestled inside the egg with its head between its legs, which 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 the dinosaurs would have hatched from their eggs in a similar way to that of the birds of our era,” scientist Fion Ma Wai-sum told Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post.

Ma said the fossil is further proof that today’s birds come from theropod dinosaurs.

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 research began 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 a part.

This team of scientists has spent three years studying the fossil and, according to Ma, the researchers will continue the analyses, which will include x-rays to learn more about the anatomy of the embryo and other parts of its body covered in stone. EFE

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