A 66 million year old embryo has been discovered in Ganzhou in southern China, reports the BBC.
The embryo has been titled “Baby Yingliang”.
Researcher Dr Fion Waisum Ma said it is “the best dinosaur embryo ever found in history”.
Surprisingly, it resembles the embryos of modern birds. It is known to be in a coiled state similar to a bird about to be hatched.
“This indicates that such behaviour in modern birds first evolved and originated among their dinosaur ancestors,” Dr Ma told the AFP news agency.
Paleontologist Prof Steve Brusatte, who was also part of the research team, tweeted that it was “one of the most stunning dinosaur fossils” he had ever seen, and that the embryo was on the brink of hatching.
Baby Yingliang length is 10.6in (27cm) in all and it stays inside a 6.7 inch-long egg at the Yingliang Stone Nature History Museum in China.
The egg was discovered in the year 2000 and was kept in storage for ten years.
Researchers were surprised to find that the embryo had something inside.
The baby dinosaur embryo was folded inside a rock and researchers are making an effort to further analyse the fossil of this skeleton.