Are we really going to be able to see dinosaurs in real life? A new discovery in China has revealed a fossil containing remains of a dinosaur sitting on top of an eggs nest.
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Archaeologists have managed to discover a rare find; a dinosaur nesting on eggs.
The amazing thing about the eggs is that the embryos are still preserved, making it an exciting discovery for archaeologists.
Further study has revealed that the Oviraptorosaur, was a bird-like dinosaur who roamed the earth more than 130 million years ago. The theropods lived during the Cretaceous period and were found in 70 million-year-old rocks at a Ganzhou City railway station.
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The adult that was fossilized was giving watch over 24 eggs of which seven contained skeletal remains.
Turns out Oviraptorosaurs are very much like their bird cousins and incubated their nests just like them.
'This kind of discovery — in essence fossilised behaviour — is the rarest of the rare in dinosaurs,' stated Matt Lamana who penned the paper.
'Though a few adult oviraptorids have been found on nests of their eggs before, no embryos have ever been found inside those eggs.
'In the new specimen, 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.
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'This dinosaur was a caring parent that ultimately gave its life while nurturing its young,' he added.
It was also revealed that had they not been fossilized, all eggs would have hatched at different times in a phenomenon called asynchronous hatching.
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Small stones were also found in the stomach of the adult dino indicating that it had swallowed some to help with its digestive process.
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'It's extraordinary to think how much biological information is captured in just this single fossil,' added Xing Xu who is a vertebrate palaeontologist
'We're going to be learning from this specimen for many years to come,' he added.
It truly is a remarkable discovery.
