Ancient fossillised nest shows some dinosaurs sat on their eggs like birds do
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Do you know about dinosaurs called oviraptors?
They were small ostrich-like dinosaurs that lived about 75 million years ago. They were believed to have sat on their eggs in nests. This behaviour is called “brooding” and it is common among birds.
Recently, an international team of scientists announced the discovery of an extraordinary fossilised nest from 70 million years ago.
This nest belonged to an adult oviraptor. The parent is actually part of the fossilised nest, which contains more than 20 eggs. The skeleton of the parent is positioned sitting over them. At least seven of the eggs were almost about to hatch.
This fossil is the first hard proof that dinosaurs used to “brood” like birds.
Fossilised eggs
This is also the first time that embryos have ever been found inside fossilised eggs. Embryos are the developing young of an egg-laying animal before hatching.
This rare fossil was found in the Nanxiong Formation in Guangdong, China. This region is famous for having the world’s largest collection of fossilised dinosaur eggs.
See an animated video of how the oviraptor dinosaurs looked like. Video credit: BBC Earth/Youtube
Dinosaurs lived millions and millions of years ago. But even today, they remain very popular in our collective imagination. We keep finding out new fascinating things about them and how they lived their lives. However, like animals today, there were many many different types of dinosaurs. Some were as small as birds while some were as huge as whales today. So, keep coming along with us at Curious Times as we go on a journey to find out more about these amazing ancient animals.
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