Incredible dinosaur nest reveals raptor sitting on her eggs

SCIENTISTS have unveiled a jaw dropping fossil of a mother dinosaur perched atop a clutch of ancient eggs.

The fossilized nest discovered in China features the preserved remains of at least eight separate dinosaurs from 70million years ago.

An extraordinary fossil of a mother dinosaur perched atop a clutch of ancient eggs has been discovered in ChinaCredit: Carnegie Museum of Natural History

The eggs belonged to an adult oviraptor, who was also preserved as part of the extraordinary fossil, ScienceAlert reports.

The skeleton is positioned in a crouch above dozens of eggs, some of which were on the verge of hatching and contain fossilised embryos.

The international team of researchers behind the find say it’s the first dinosaur preserved sitting on a nest of eggs with fossilised babies.

“This kind of discovery – in essence, fossilized behaviour – is the rarest of the rare in dinosaurs,” said team member Dr Matt Lamanna, from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in the US.

The skeleton is positioned in a crouch above two dozens eggsCredit: Bi et al., Science Bulletin, 2020

“Though a few adult oviraptorids have been found on nests of their eggs before, no embryos have ever been found inside those eggs.”

Oviraptors were a group of bird-like theropod dinosaurs that thrived during the Cretaceous Period.

The omnivores grew up to 1.5 metres in length and populated Asia from 145 to 66 million years ago.

The new specimen was recovered from Cretaceous-aged rocks some 70million years old in Ganzhou City in southern China’s Jiangxi Province.

Oviraptors grew up to 1.5 metres long and lived in Asia during the Late Cretaceous periodCredit: Zhao Chuang, PNSO

Measuring roughly a metre squared, it consist of a partial skeleton crouched over 24 fossilised eggs.

At least seven of these eggs preserve bones or partial skeletons of unhatched oviraptorid embryos inside.

The late stage of development of the babies and the adult’s position over them strongly suggests that the latter died while incubating its nest

“The babies were almost ready to hatch, which tells us beyond a doubt that this oviraptorid had tended its nest for quite a long time,” Dr Lamanna said.

“This dinosaur was a caring parent that ultimately gave its life while nurturing its young.”

Analyses carried out on the specimen indicate that the eggs were incubated at high, bird-like temperatures, adding weight to the theory that the creature died while incubating its nest.

While all of the embryos are well developed, some appear to have been more mature than others, suggesting that oviraptor eggs in the same clutch may have hatched at slightly different times.

Known as asynchronous hatching, this characteristic remains in some modern birds.

“It’s extraordinary to think how much biological information is captured in just this single fossil,” said team member Xing Xu, palaeontologist at the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology in Beijing.

“We’re going to be learning from this specimen for many years to come.”

The study was published in the Science Bulletin.

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