Taiwan finds 4,800-year-old fossil of mother cradling baby

The 48 sets of remains unearthed in graves in the Taichung area are the earliest trace of human activity found in central Taiwan. The most striking discovery among them was the skeleton of a young mother looking down at a child cradled in her arms.

Archaeologists in Taiwan have found a 4,800-year-old human fossil of a mother holding an infant child in her arms, museum officials said on Tuesday.

The 48 sets of remains unearthed in graves in the Taichung area are the earliest trace of human activity found in central Taiwan. The most striking discovery among them was the skeleton of a young mother looking down at a child cradled in her arms.

“When it was unearthed, all of the archaeologists and staff members were shocked. Why? Because the mother was looking down at the baby in her hands,” said Chu Whei-lee, a curator in the Anthropology Department at Taiwan’s National Museum of Natural Science.

The excavation of the site began in May 2014 and took a year to complete. Carbon dating was used to determine the ages of the fossils, which included five children.

The Origins of the Mummified Mother and Baby

The scientific excavation began in 2014 and took about a year to complete.

A team of archaeologists led by Chu Whei-Lee of Taiwan’s National Museum of Science was working on a Neolithic site 6.2 miles (10 kilometres) inland from Taiwan’s western coast.

Today, that area is called Taichung City but the site itself has been dubbed An-ho. Experts believe shorelines have shifted over the years and that An-ho was once a coastal village.

Indeed, over 200 shark teeth have been found in the site’s dwellings, however, whether these teeth were practical, decorative, or spiritual is not known. The inhabitants of An-ho were most likely Dabenkeng people.

“The Dabenkeng people were the first farmers in Taiwan, who may have come from the south and southeast coasts of China about 5,000 years ago,” says Chengwha Tsang of Taiwan’s Academia Sinica. “This culture is the earliest Neolithic culture so far found in Taiwan.” Taiwanese Dabenkeng culture featured corded ware pottery and stone adzes.

While the Dabenkeng lasted until the 3rd millennium BC in Mainland China, Taiwanese Dabenkeng lasted only until around 4,500 BC.

Yet from Taiwan, the Dabenkeng spread across Southeast Asia and Oceania, bringing their culture and language with them.

“They were probably the earliest ancestors of the Austronesian language-speaking people living nowadays in Taiwan and on the islands of the Pacific,” said Tsang.

World’s Oldest Pants, Turfan Man’s Trousers, was Made through Three Weaving Techniques

What little rain that falls on a gravelly desert located in western China’s Tarim Basin evaporates as it hits the blistering turf. Here, in this parched wasteland, lie the ancient remains of people who made one of the biggest fashion splashes of all time. Herders and horse riders who buried their dead in the Tarim Basin’s Yanghai graveyard pioneered pants making between roughly 3,200 and 3,000 years ago. Their deft combination of weaving techniques and decorative patterns — displaying influences from societies across Eurasia — yielded a pair of stylish yet durable trousers now recognized as the oldest such garment known in the world (SN: 5/30/14).

Now, an international team of archaeologists, fashion designers, geoscientists, chemists and conservators has untangled how those trousers were made and painstakingly created a modern replica. The vintage slacks weave a tale not only of textile innovation but also of how cultural practices fanned out across Asia, the researchers report in the March Archaeological Research in Asia.

“A diversity of textile techniques and patterns of different local origins, traditions and times merged into something new in this garment,” says archaeologist and project director Mayke Wagner of the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin. “Eastern Central Asia was a laboratory where people, plants, animals, knowledge and experiences from different directions and sources came … and were transformed.”

Fashion icon

One man brought the pants to scientists’ attention without uttering a word. His naturally mummified body, as well as the preserved bodies of more than 500 others, was uncovered during excavations conducted by Chinese archaeologists since the early 1970s at the Yanghai cemetery.

He sported an outfit that consisted of the trousers, a poncho belted at the waist, one pair of braided bands to fasten the trouser legs below the knees, another pair to fasten soft leather boots at the ankles and a wool headband with four bronze disks and two seashells sewn on it. A leather bridle, wooden horse bit and battle-axe that had been placed in his grave indicated he had been a horse-riding warrior. Researchers now call him Turfan Man because the Yanghai site lies about 43 kilometres southeast of the Chinese city of Turfan.

Of all of Turfan Man’s garments, his trousers stood out as truly special. Not only were they older by at least several centuries than any other examples of such gear, but the Yanghai pants also boasted a sophisticated, modern look. The pants feature two leg pieces that gradually widen at the top, connected by a crotch piece that widens and bunches in the middle to increase leg mobility.

Within a few hundred years, mobile groups across Eurasia began wearing pants like those at Yanghai, other archaeological finds have shown. Woven leg covers connected by a flexible crotch piece eased the strain of riding horses bareback over long distances. Not surprisingly, mounted armies debuted around that time.

Today, people everywhere don denim jeans and dress slacks that incorporate the design and production principles of the ancient Yanghai trousers.

In short, Turfan Man was the ultimate trendsetter.

Fancy pants

Despite being so fashion-forward, the ancient Yanghai horseman left researchers wondering how his remarkable pants had been made. No traces of cutting appeared on the fabric, so Wagner’s team suspected that the garment had been woven to fit its wearer. A close examination of Turfan Man’s trousers revealed a combination of three weaving techniques, the scientists report in the new study. A re-created version of the find — fashioned by an expert weaver from the yarn of coarse-wooled sheep similar to those whose wool was used by ancient Yanghai weavers — confirmed that observation.

Much of the garment consists of twill weave, a major innovation in the history of textiles.

Twill changes the character of woven wool from firm to elastic, providing enough “give” to let a person move freely in a pair of tight-fitting pants. The fabric is created by using rods on a loom to weave a pattern of parallel, diagonal lines. Lengthwise warp threads are held in place so that a row of weft threads can be passed over and under them at regular intervals. The starting point of this weaving pattern shifts slightly to the right or left for each ensuing row so that a diagonal line forms.

Variations in the number and colour of weft threads in the twill weave on Turfan Man’s trousers were used to create pairs of brown stripes running up the off-white crotch piece, the researchers found.

Textile archaeologist Karina Grömer of the Natural History Museum Vienna says she recognized twill weave on Turfan Man’s trousers when she examined them around five years ago. Grömer had previously reported that pieces of woven fabric found in Austria’s Hallstatt salt mine, where such delicate textiles preserve well, displayed the oldest known twill weave. Radiocarbon dating places the Hallstatt textiles between around 3,500 and 3,200 years old — roughly 200 years before Turfan man sported his britches.

People in Europe and Central Asia may have independently invented twill weaving, says Grömer, who did not participate in the new study. But at the Yanghai site, weavers combined twill with other weaving techniques and innovative designs to create high-quality riding pants.

“This is not a beginner’s item,” Grömer says. “It’s like the Rolls-Royce of trousers.”

Consider the ancient trousers’ knee sections. A technique now known as tapestry weaving produced a thicker, more protective fabric at these joints, the researchers found. A third weaving method was used on the upper border of the pants to create a thick waistband.

Other features of the trousers involved an unusual twining method, in which two differently colored weft threads were twisted around each other by hand and laced through warp threads, creating a decorative, geometric pattern across the knees that resembles interlocking T’s leaning to the side. The same twining method produced zigzag stripes at the trousers’ ankles and calves.

Wagner’s team could find only a few historical examples of such twining, including borders on cloaks of the Maori people, an Indigenous group in New Zealand.

Yanghai artisans also showed their ingenuity in designing a formfitting crotch piece that was wider at its centre than at its ends, Grömer says. Trousers dating to a few hundred years later than the Yanghai find, found in several parts of Asia, often consist of woven legs connected by square fabric crotch pieces that resulted in a less comfortable and flexible fit. In tests with a man riding a horse bareback while wearing a re-created version of Turfan Man’s entire outfit, the trousers fit snugly yet allowed the legs to clamp firmly around the horse.

Today’s denim jeans are made from one piece of twill material following some of the same design principles as those favoured by Yanghai pants makers three millennia ago.

Clothes connections

Perhaps most striking, Turfan Man’s trousers tell a story of how ancient herding groups carried their cultural practices and knowledge across Asia, spreading seeds of innovation. For instance, the interlocking T pattern decorating the ancient horseman’s pants at the knees appears on bronze vessels found in what’s now China from around the same time, roughly 3,300 years ago, Wagner’s team says. The nearly simultaneous adoption of this geometric form in Central and East Asia coincides with the arrival in those regions of herders from West Eurasian grasslands riding horses that they domesticated 4,200 years ago or more (SN: 10/20/21).

Pottery found at those horse riders’ home sites in western Siberia and Kazakhstan displays interlocking T’s as well. Any deeper meaning this pattern held aside from its artistic appeal remains unknown. But West Eurasian horse breeders probably spread the interlocking T design across much of ancient Asia, Wagner and her colleagues suspect.

Similarly, a stepped pyramid pattern woven into the Yanghai pants appears on pottery from Central Asia’s Petrovka culture, which dates to between around 3,900 and 3,750 years ago. The same pattern resembles architectural designs that are more than 4,000 years old from western and southwestern Asian and Middle Eastern societies, including Mesopotamian stepped pyramids, the researchers say. Tapestry weaving such as that observed on Turfan Man’s trousers also originated in those societies.

It’s no surprise that cultural influences from throughout Asia affected ancient people in the Tarim Basin, says anthropologist Michael Frachetti of Washington University in St. Louis. Yanghai people inhabited a region at a crossroads of seasonal migration routes followed by herding groups starting more than 4,000 years ago (SN: 3/8/17). Those routes ran from the Altai Mountains in Central and East Asia to Southwest Asia where Iran is located today. Excavations at sites along those routes indicate that herders spread crops across much of Asia too (SN: 4/2/14).

Cultural transitions in the Tarim Basin may have started even earlier. Ancient DNA suggests that western Asian herders in oxen-pulled wagons moved through much of Europe and Asia around 5,000 years ago (SN: 11/15/17).

By around 2,000 years ago, herders’ migration paths formed part of a trade and travel network running from China to Europe that became known as the Silk Road. Cultural mixing and mingling intensified as thousands of local routes throughout Eurasia formed a massive network.

Turfan Man’s multicultural riding pants show that even in the Silk Road’s early stages, migrating herders carried new ideas and practices to distant communities. “The Yanghai pants are an entry point for examining how the Silk Road transformed the world,” Frachetti says.

Looming questions

A more basic question concerns how exactly Yanghai clothes makers transformed yarn spun from sheep’s wool into Turfan Man’s trousers. Even after making a replica of those pants on a modern loom, Wagner’s team is unsure what an ancient Yanghai loom looked like. No remnants of those devices have been found. The researchers suspect a loom constructed to be operated from a sitting position would have made it possible to create intricate, twined patterns. Experiments with different weaving devices are the next step in untangling how Turfan Man’s trousers were made, Wagner says.

It’s clear, though, that the makers of these ancient pants blended several complex techniques into a revolutionary piece of apparel, says archaeologist and linguist Elizabeth Barber of Occidental College in Los Angeles. Barber has studied the origins and development of cloth and clothing in West Asia.

“We truly know so little about how clever the ancient weavers were,” Barber says. Turfan Man may not have had time to ponder his clothes makers’ prowess. With a pair of pants like that, he was ready to ride.

Terracotta Warriors Discovered in China Near Emperor’s Tomb

Archaeologists have uncovered more than 20 new Terracotta Warriors,  life-size figures built to protect the first emperor of China in the afterlife.  

The Terracotta Army is thought to consist of 8,000 sculpted “warriors” located in three pits about a mile northeast of the mausoleum of Emperor Qin Shi Huang (259 B.C. to 210 B.C.), who unified China in 221 B.C. Archaeologists have excavated about 2,000 of these lifelike soldiers, which were buried with weapons such as crossbows, spears and swords, some of which are still intact.  

Qin Shi Huang became king of Qin in 247 B.C., one of several states jockeying for land and power in China. For decades Qin had been growing larger, gradually seizing territory ruled by other states; and in 221 B.C., Qin’s rivals were defeated and Qin Shi Huang became emperor of China. 

Chinese historical texts say nothing about the Terracotta army or why it was built.

The army could have been a way to elevate the emperor’s status, particularly because after Qin Shi Huang’s death in 210 B.C., his family was overthrown by a rebellion led by what would become the Han Dynasty; that dynasty likely did not want to highlight the first emperor’s achievements.

In addition, modern-day archaeologists often interpret the army as being created to serve Qin Shi Huang in the afterlife. 

The newly discovered warriors were unearthed in “pit one,” China Global Television Network (CGTN) reported.  

This pit contains mainly infantry and chariots; a few of the warriors are generals and can be identified from their more elaborate headgear. 

A picture of the newly excavated warriors published on the television network website appears to show only infantry, but at least one of the newfound warriors is a general, CGTN reported.

The warriors appear to be in pieces, and experts at the Emperor Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum Site Museum will restore them, CGTN reported. 

The archaeological team did not return requests for comment at the time of publication.

Although the website of the Emperor Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum Site Museum didn’t have any information on the newly found warriors, it did say it is common for the warriors to be found in pieces and put back together. 

These warriors will now be placed back together. It remains to be seen if any colour survived on the newly found warriors or what new information they will reveal about the Terracotta Army.

Rare ‘fish scale’ armour discovered in a Chinese tomb

About 2,500 years ago, a man in northwest China was buried with armour made of more than 5,000 leather scales, a military garment fashioned so intricately, its design looks like the overlapping scales of a fish, a new study finds.

The armour, which resembles an apron-like waistcoat, could be donned quickly without the help of another person. “It is a light, highly efficient one-size-fits-all defensive garment for soldiers of a mass army,” said study lead researcher Patrick Wertmann, a researcher at the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies of the University of Zurich.

The team called it an early example of bionics or taking inspiration from nature for human technology. In this case, the fish-like overlapping leather scales “strengthen the human skin for better defence against the blow, stab and shot,” said study co-researcher Mayke Wagner, the scientific director of the Eurasia Department of the German Archaeological Institute and head of its Beijing office. 

Researchers unearthed the leather garment at Yanghai cemetery, an archaeological site near the city of Turfan, which sits at the rim of the Taklamakan Desert. Local villagers discovered the ancient cemetery in the early 1970s. Since 2003, archaeologists have excavated more than 500 burials there, including the grave with the leather armour. Their findings show that ancient people used the cemetery continuously for nearly 1,400 years, from the 12th century B.C. to the second century A.D. While these people did not leave written records, ancient Chinese historians called the people of the Tarim Basin the Cheshi people, and noted that they lived in tents, practised agriculture, kept animals such as cattle and sheep and were proficient horse riders and archers, Wertmann said.

The armour is a rare find. Leather scale armour discovered in the ancient Egyptian tomb of King Tutankhamun, from the 14th century B.C., is the only other well-preserved ancient leather scale armour with a known provenance.

Another well-preserved leather scale armour, housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, dates from the eighth to the third century B.C., but its origin is unknown.

It was a “big surprise” to find the armour, Wagner told Live Science in an email. The researchers found the garment in the grave of a man who died at about age 30 and was buried with several artefacts, including pottery, two-horse cheekpieces made from horn and wood, and the skull of a sheep. 

“At first glance, the dusty bundle of leather pieces [in the burial] … did not arouse much attention among the archaeologists,” Wagner said. “After all, the finds of ancient leather objects are quite common in the extremely dry climate of the Tarim Basin.” 

A reconstruction of the body armour revealed that it sported 5,444 small leather scales and 140 larger scales, likely made of cow rawhide, that was “arranged in horizontal rows and connected by leather laces passing through the incisions,” Wagner said.

The different scaled rows overlap, a style that prompted the Greek historian Herodotus to call similarly fashioned armour, worn by fifth century B.C. Persian soldiers, just like “the scales of a fish,” Wagner noted. 

A plant thorn stuck into the armour gave a radiocarbon date of 786 B.C to 543 B.C., the researchers found, indicating that it was older than the fish-like armour worn by the Persians. According to the team’s reconstruction, the armour would have weighed up to 11 pounds (5 kilograms). 

Utterly unique

The discovery is one of a kind. “There is no other scale armour from this or an earlier period in China,” Wagner said. “In eastern China, armour fragments have been found, but of a different style.”

A deep dive into the history of scaled armour revealed that West Asian engineers developed scale armour to protect chariot drivers in about 1500 B.C. when chariotry became part of the military. After that, this style of armour spread northward and eastward to the Persians and Scythians and eventually to the Greeks. “But for the Greeks, it was always exotic; they preferred other types of armour,” Wertmann told Live Science.

Due to its local uniqueness, it appears that the newly described armour was not made in China, Wagner said. In fact, it looks like Neo-Assyrian military equipment from the seventh century B.C., which is seen in rock carvings, according to The British Museum.

“We suggest that this piece of leather scale armour was probably manufactured in the Neo-Assyrian Empire and possibly also the neighbouring regions,” Wertmann said. If this idea is correct, “then the Yanghai armour is one of the rare actual proofs of West-East technology transfer across the Eurasian continent during the first half of the first millennium B.C.E.,” the researchers wrote in the study.

How was it worn?

The armour mainly protects the front torso, hips, left side and lower back. “This design fits people of different statures because width and height can be adjusted by the thongs,” Wertmann said. Its left-side protection meant the wearer could easily move their right arm.

“It seems the perfect outfit for both mounted fighters and foot soldiers, who have to move rapidly and rely on their own strength,” he added. “The horse cheek pieces which were found in the burial may indicate that the tomb owner was indeed a horseman.”

However, how the armour ended up in the man’s burial “remains a riddle,” Wertmann said. “Whether the wearer of the Yanghai armour himself was a foreign soldier (a man from Turfan) in Assyrian service who was outfitted with Assyrian equipment and brought it home, or he captured the armour from someone else who was there, or whether he himself was an Assyrian or North Caucasian who had somehow ended up in Turfan is a matter of speculation. Everything is possible.”

Archaeologists stunned by China’s ‘unique underwater world’ shrouded in mystery

Hidden in the depths of Qiandao Lake, China, lies a mysterious sunken city. Myriad ornate temples, each intricately carved with the script and perfectly preserved, offer a tantalising glimpse into China’s imperial past. The city, known as Shi Cheng, is 140 feet underwater and was built during the Eastern Han Dynasty, the building dating back to the 2nd century.

Its name loosely translates to “Lion City”, and was once a bustling hub of commerce.

But, when it was drowned in the mid-20th century, it was largely forgotten.

Only in recent years have researchers and the public rediscovered its ancient splendours, many of which were explored during the Smithsonian Channel’s documentary ‘China from above: Mountain and rivers’.

It was here that the documentary’s narrator noted how the islands within the newly formed lake are actually the tops of hills, describing the space beneath them as a “unique underwater world”.

The ancient city was flooded as part of the Chinese government’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ programme and made way for the country’s first hydropower plant.

A landscape containing over 1,000 islands was created, which sits at the bottom of a reservoir close to the Qiandao Lake near the picturesque Wu Shi Mountain.

Lou Shanliang, a diver, was one of the first people to plunge into the lake and find the city.

He told the documentary how he used to swim in the waters as a child, and how finding out what was beneath was like discovering “another world”.

Teaming up with Wu Lixin, a cameraman, the pair used 3D scanning technology in order to bring the city back to life on the surface. Thought to have been built at some point between 25 and 200 AD, Lion City was once one of China’s most powerful cities and held on to this status for centuries.

While it had been forgotten for over 50 years, in 2014, the authorities discovered that the city was still very much intact and decided to start allowing tourists to visit it.

Explaining that their efforts were the first time the city has been captured three-dimensionally, Mr Wu said: “If we want to get a comprehensive set of data, we have to revolve around the object and take many photos from different angles.

“Then, we input those photos into a computer programme.”

What resulted were a series of 3D images revealing the ancient stonework found underwater, including majestic statues of lions and other figures.

Mr Wu said: “I hope that through our filming and exploration more submerged historic relics and the stories behind them can be brought to light again.”

Much of the stonework found in the lake dates to the 16th century and is considered as some of the best examples of Chinese architecture. The divers also found the city walls, which date from the same period, along with some notable wide streets and 265 archways.

In addition to these, they found five entry gates to the city and six main streets paved with stones connected to one another, making the city about the same size as 62 football fields. The Lion City is believed to have reached its peak in history between 1368 and 1644 when the Ming Dynasty ruled over China.

After this point it began to decline, the fatal blow coming in 1959 when the Chinese government flooded it. Now, however, history buffs and keen tourists can visit the lost city for themselves, and even dive beneath the water with guides.

Protected from wind, rain, and sun, the entire city has been branded a “time capsule” as almost every structure remains completely intact, including wooden beams and stairs. There have since been plans to boost its tourism potential by constructing a floating tunnel across the lake.

3,000-year-old clan cemetery uncovered in central China

Photo provided by the Anyang Institute of cultural relics and archaeology on Jan. 5, 2022, shows a horse buried with the dead at the Shaojiapeng site, which is decorated with shell strings. (Anyang Institute of cultural relics and archaeology/Handout via Xinhua)

A large-scale tomb cluster dating back to the late Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BC) was recently discovered in Shaojiapeng Village, Anyang City of central China’s Henan Province, according to the city’s institute of cultural relics and archaeology.

Located 2.4 km away from the palace and ancestral temple of the Yin Ruins, a UNESCO World Heritage site, the Shaojiapeng site is believed to be a major living area for a clan named “Ce” in the Shang Dynasty.

The Chinese character “Ce” was found on the inscription of bronzeware uncovered in the cemetery relics, which indicates the identity of the clan.

A total of 18 building foundations, 24 tombs, four-horse and chariot pits, along with relics including exquisite bronzeware, jade and stone objects, bone ware and mussels, were found during the two-year excavation of the site.

Six carriages and several warriors and horses buried with the dead were uncovered in the pits, with luxurious decorations on the relics.

Some warriors were found wearing hats with shell strings and the foreheads of some horses were decorated with gold veneer and bronze backing.

“This is very rare among the ancient discoveries of Anyang, reflecting the extraordinary status and power of the carriage owner,” said Kong Deming, director of the institute.

The researchers are still working on unlocking the remaining mysteries of the site, including the social status of the clan, their division of labour and their relationship with the Shang royal family.

The relics at the site are diverse and relatively well-preserved, making them of great significance to studies on the scope and layout of the Yin Ruins, according to Kong.

2,700-year-old leather armor proves technology transfer happened in antiquity

Researchers at the University of Zurich have investigated a unique leather scale armour found in the tomb of a horse rider in Northwest China. Design and construction details of the armour indicate that it originated in the Neo-Assyrian Empire between the 6th and 8th centuries BCE before being brought to China.

In 2013, a nearly complete leather scale armour was found in the tomb of an approx. 30-year-old male near the modern-day city of Turfan in Northwest China.

This unprecedented find, which survived the millennia thanks to the area’s extremely arid climate, provided the international team led by Patrick Wertmann from the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies of the University of Zurich with new insights on the spread of military technology during the first millennium BCE.

Scale armours protect the vital organs of fighters like an extra layer of the skin without restricting their mobility. The armours were made of small shield-shaped plates arranged in horizontal rows and sewn onto a backing.

Due to the costly materials and laborious manufacturing process, armours were very precious, and wearing them was considered a privilege of the elite. It was rare for them to be buried with the owner. However, the emergence of powerful states with large armies in the ancient world led to the development of less precious but nevertheless effective armours made of leather, bronze or iron for ordinary soldiers.

Standard military equipment for horsemen

The researchers used radiocarbon dating to determine the age of the armour to between 786 and 543 BCE.

It was originally made of about 5,444 smaller scales and 140 larger scales, which together with leather laces and lining weighed between 4 and 5kg.

The armour resembles a waistcoat that protects the front of the torso, hips, sides and the lower back of the body. It can be put on quickly without the help of another person and fits people of different statures.

“The armour was professionally produced in large numbers,” says Patrick Wertmann. With the increasing use of chariots in Middle Eastern warfare, a special armour for horsemen was developed from the 9th century BCE.

These armours later became part of the standardized equipment of military forces of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which extended from parts of present-day Iraq to Iran, Syria, Turkey and Egypt.

Two armors, distinct units

While there is no direct parallel to the 2,700-year-old armour in the whole of Northwest China, there are some stylistic and functional similarities to a second contemporary armour of unknown origin held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (the Met).

It is possible that the two armours were intended as outfits for distinct units of the same army, i.e. the Yanghai armour for cavalry and the armour in the Met for infantry.

It is unclear whether the Yanghai armour belonged to a foreign soldier working for the Assyrian forces who brought it back home with him, or whether the armour was captured from someone else who had been to the region.

“Even though we can’t trace the exact path of the scale armour from Assyria to Northwest China, the find is one of the rare actual proofs of West-East technology transfer across the Eurasian continent during the early first millennium BCE,” says Wertmann.

Perfectly-preserved dinosaur embryo found inside the fossilized egg in China

A well-preserved dinosaur embryo has been found inside a fossilized egg. The fossilized dinosaur embryo came from Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province in southern China and was acquired by researchers in 2000.

Researchers at Yingliang Group, a company that mines stones, suspected it contained egg fossils, but put it in storage for 10 years, according to a news release.

When construction began on Yingliang Stone Natural History Museum, boxes of unearthed fossils were sorted through.

“Museum staff identified them as dinosaur eggs and saw some bones on the broken cross-section of one of the eggs,” Lida Xing of China University of Geosciences, Beijing, said in a news release. An embryo was found hidden within, which they named “Baby Yingliang.”

The embryo is that of the bird-like oviraptorosaurs, part of the theropod group. Theropod means “beast foot,” but theropod feet usually resembled those of birds. Birds are descended from one lineage of small theropods. 

In studying the embryo, researchers found the dinosaur took on a distinctive tucking posture before hatching, which had been considered unique to birds.

The study is published in the science journal.

Researchers say this behaviour may have evolved through non-avian theropods.

“Most known non-avian dinosaur embryos are incomplete with skeletons disarticulated,” said Waisum Maof the University of Birmingham, U.K.

“We were surprised to see this embryo beautifully preserved inside a dinosaur egg, lying in a bird-like posture. This posture had not been recognized in non-avian dinosaurs before.”

While fossilized dinosaur eggs have been found during the last 100 years, discovering a well-preserved embryo is very rare, the researchers said in the release. 

The embryo’s posture was not previously seen in non-avian dinosaurs, which is “especially notable because it’s reminiscent of a late-stage modern bird embryo.”

The researchers will continue to study the rare specimen in even more depth.

They will attempt to image its internal anatomy. Some of its body parts are still covered in rocks. Their findings can also be used in more studies of fossil embryos.