Extraordinarily preserved fossilised embryo from China offers clues to development of duck-billed dinosaurs

Name: Perfectly preserved hadrosaurus embryo fossil discovered in China
Uploaded: 2022-05-14T04:00:20.000Z
Duration: 1 min 13 s
Description: Perfectly preserved hadrosaurus embryo fossil discovered in China

Embryos are rare finds in palaeontology, but this one is remarkably intact compared to other discoveries

The scientists have already found that the egg and embryo are smaller than other duck-billed dinosaurs

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An artist rendition of the fetus of a duck-billed dinosaur found in eastern China. Photo: BMC Ecology and Evolution

Kevin McSpadden

Published: 12:00pm, 14 May 2022

Scientists in southern China announced last week the discovery of an extremely well-preserved embryo fossil of duck-billed dinosaurs that should offer insights into the development and evolution of the prehistoric animals.

While dinosaur eggs are common worldwide, embryos are rare and the example found in Jiangxi province by the team of scientists from the Fujian Science and Technology Museum and the China University of Geosciences is exceptionally well preserved.

The high-quality preservation has the potential to offer unique insights into a genus of dinosaurs called hadrosaurus. Particularly, it could illuminate how they developed and evolved.

Because the dinosaur was still in an embryo, and many features had not been developed, the scientists felt more confident calling it a hadrosaurus, but could not identify the species.

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Perfectly preserved hadrosaurus embryo fossil discovered in China

“Generally when you find dinosaur eggs, scientists do not find anything at all, they only find the sediments that the rest of the fossil is surrounded with,” said Michael Pittman, a palaeontologist from the School of Life Sciences at Chinese University of Hong Kong, who was not involved in the paper.

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Extraordinarily preserved fossilised embryo from China offers clues to development of duck-billed dinosaurs

Embryos are rare finds in palaeontology, but this one is remarkably intact compared to other discoveries The scientists have already found that the egg and embryo are smaller than other duck-billed dinosaurs

Embryos are rare finds in palaeontology, but this one is remarkably intact compared to other discoveries

The scientists have already found that the egg and embryo are smaller than other duck-billed dinosaurs