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First Pterosaur Embryo Fossil Discovered

blamanj writes "A fossil embryo, preserved in an almost complete egg was found in the sediment of a lake in Liaoning in northeastern China. The Liaoning embryo has a wingspan of 10.6 inches, indicating that the embryo would have grown up into a medium-to-large pterosaur."

6 of 35 comments (clear)

  1. RTFAA, smartass by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    "It is bigger than fossils of hatched pterosaurs, which suggests it probably would have hatched soon."

  2. No, no, no by barakn · · Score: 3, Informative

    It is an embryo, a fossilized embryo.

    --
    "I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
  3. Bad embryology by yet+another+coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Maybe you are joking.

    Humans have gill slits, not gills, and limb buds, not fins or wings. The old saying is "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." It is not exactly true, though. The embryology of humans resembles that of many mammals. It resembles fish embryology, too, but not for as long. We share similar adult body patterns and similar patterning genes to many animals, and our early embryology can looks similar. It is not as if we grow to be fish really early and then keep going since we are more evolved than fish.

  4. Re:Argh! by beeplet · · Score: 2, Informative

    No pictures?! This screams for pictures! It's not even worth posting without pictures! Pictures!

    Nature story with pictures.

  5. Images by mrgrey · · Score: 3, Informative

    Here's a link to the story with images.

    Link

    http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1128 68 4.htm

    --
    -Tolerate my intolerance
  6. Re:bird-dinosaur link by barawn · · Score: 3, Informative

    no really compelling evidence that exctinction was caused by a meteor as the mainstream media implies.

    Barring the really gigantic impact crater in the south of Mexico?

    After the Chicxulub crater was found (oddly enough - with a dating of 65 million years) most scientists were pretty convinced that an asteroid (10 km is not a meteorite) killed off the dinosaurs. There may have been other contributing effects, but a 10 km object slamming into the Earth would have done extremely bad things to the planet's biosphere.