Is Jurassic Park Real!? A Dinosaur Embryo Was Just Found Inside a Fossil Egg

A charming fictional chaos theorist once posited, in the world-famous Jurassic Park saga, that “life finds a way.” And in this case, life might be finding a way by imitating art, as a dinosaur embryo has been found inside a fossilized egg.

Researchers at Yingliang Group acquired the fossilized egg in 2000 and put it in storage for a decade, suspecting it contains egg fossils. Upon further examination, they discovered an embryo was found hidden within, which they named “Baby Yingliang.”

“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, explained in a news release.

The embryo is believed to be that of the oviraptorosaurs, a feathered maniraptoran dinosaur from the Cretaceous Period that is part of the theropod group and is known for its short, beaked, parrot-like skull.

Researchers will continue to image its internal anatomy, as some of its body parts are still covered in rocks. Waisum Maof the University of Birmingham, U.K. said that the researchers were “surprised” to find that the embryo was “lying in a bird-like posture” in the egg, as that had been considered unique to birds.

All of this can only mean one thing: We’ll be getting to visit a real-life Jurassic Park soon, right? Sadly, that is not the case. While this embryo is a rare find, it will likely only be useful in regards to research, rather than being the building blocks of bringing dinosaurs into the modern world via an amusement park.

Though, honestly, that might be a blessing because if every single Jurassic Park movie has taught us anything, it’s that humans and dinosaurs simply do not mix. And any attempt to try and mix the two species typically results in at least a handful of humans being eaten.