The well-preserved fossil fossil skull has a length of 3 centimeters
The head of a dinosaur embryo from Argentina provides surprising details about facial features of babies present in one species from a major dinosaur group called titanosaurs that have inhabited the largest land animals that have ever lived on earth.
Scientists said Thursday that the fragile fossil is one of the best-preserved embryonic remains of the dinosaur ever found – an almost intact skull about 3 cm (1.2 inches) that remained three-dimensional instead of flat during it fossilization process.
“We used to be excited about the skeletons of giant dinosaurs, but it always makes a difference when we look at the eggs of these giants,” said paleobiologist Martin Kundrat of the Center for Interdisciplinary Life Sciences of Pavol Jozef Safarik in Slovakia, lead author of the study published in the journal Current Biology.
“This does not happen that often and it remains quite exceptional to find more or less complete fossil embryonic remains,” Kundrat added, calling this dinosaur “the little giant.”
The fossil of the Cretaceous from Patagonia is believed to be about 80 million years old. The dinosaur seems to have special facial features as a coloring that changed as he got older. Powerful imaging technology discovered unexpected features, including a small horn projecting from the snout, like eyes forward, pointing to a binocular vision.
The face horn may have helped the dinosaur out of its egg like the “egg tooth” present in some birds and reptiles, but may also have served other functions such as defense or food gathering, Kundrat said.
Titanosaurs are part of a very successful group of plant-eating dinosaurs called sauropods known for their long necks, long tails and pillar-like legs. The largest, such as Argentinosaurus and Patagotitan, were about 35 meters long. The exact species to which this embryo belonged is unclear. The head resembles a medium-sized titanosaurus called Tapuiasaurus that was about 13 meters long.
The embryo differed in facial anatomy and size from similar Patagonian titanosaur embryos.
“It’s a bit unusual for a fossil to be just represented by a head,” Kundrat added. “The specimen perished to complete its development. It had undergone only four-fifths of its incubation period.”
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