The sharpest look yet at the oldest known dinosaur embryos (pictured, one of the eggs and its inhabitant) has revealed some "big surprises," a scientist says.
For one thing, the 190-million-year-old babies of Massospondylus—a two-legged dinosaur that preceded the well-known sauropods, such as Diplodocus—do not resemble their parents, according to study co-author Hans-Dieter Sues, a paleontologist at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. (See more dinosaur-embryo pictures.)
The 8-inch-long (20-centimeter-long) youngster, for example, had long front legs for walking on all fours, and its overall body proportion—such as a short snout—made it "look like a dwarf version of a sauropod dinosaur," the largest animals to walk Earth. (See a sauropod picture.) The babies would have lost these traits as they matured.
The discovery suggests Massospondylus had characteristics that "foreshadowed" the later look of the sauropods.
Source from : http://news.nationalgeographic.com
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