In the 1990s, a team of archaeologists discovered a dinosaur embryo in Henan, China, which they named Baby Louie . It was inside a nest the size of a truck wheel that contained huge eggs between 89 and 100 million years old . At that time, the species to which this Chinese dinosaur could have belonged could not be identified. Now, a team of paleontologists has discovered that Baby Louie is a unique creature that belongs to a new species of giant oviraptorosaur, similar to some large modern birds like the cassowary .
The researchers, whose conclusions have been published in Nature Communications , compared the embryo fossil with other previously described dinosaur species and have seen that it is a different species from the so far known oviraptorosaur caenagnathidae, a group of enigmatic feathered dinosaurs and beaked, resembling birds . They have named this new species Beibeilong sinensis , which can be translated as “Chinese dragon baby”. The embryo is 38 cm long from the snout to the base of the tail, but previous research estimates that dinosaurs of this type could weigh more than one ton (1,100 kg) as adults .
The Baby Louie fossil had been shipped to the United States, as were many egg fossils collected in Henan, which were exported from China to other countries. “This particular fossil was away for more than 20 years and its return to China has allowed us to study it thoroughly, ” says Professor Lü Junchang, a paleontologist at the Institute of Geology of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences. The eggs are up to 18 inches long and weighed about 10 pounds , making them among the largest dinosaur eggs ever discovered. They appeared in a nest about 2 to 3 meters in diameter that probably contained at least two dozen eggs.
According to Darla Zelenitsky, a professor at the University of Calgary who was part of the research team, “it was a mystery to know what type of dinosaur could lay these huge eggs. Because fossils of large theropods, such as tyrannosaurs, were also found in rocks in Henan, some experts initially thought they may have belonged to a tyrannosaurus.
We now know that these eggs were laid by a gigantic oviraptorosaur , a dinosaur that would have looked very much like an oversized cassowary. “Although no adult bones have been found, scientists believe they probably reached eight meters in length and a three tons in weight, from the comparison of its close relatives.
Caption 1: Recreation of the Beibeilong sinensis in its nest. Credit: Zhao Chuang
Photo caption 2: Fossil eggs in the nest.
