Over 120 million geezerhood ago , on the banks of a lake in what is now advanced - day China , you would have been greeted by a chattering , raucous picture as a colony of pterosaurs nested in the sand . Soon after , however , a sandstorm pelted the nesting site and swallow up hundreds of the eggsin double-dyed shape , even preserving the first known three - dimensional pterosaur embryo .
Up until now , only a handful of pterosaur ballock preserved in three dimensions were experience to scientific discipline , with three unearth in Argentina and five from China . This new find blows all the others out of the water , as paleontologists have fastidiously uncovered an staggering 215 eggs all glacial in metre . Even more incredible , 16 of these still hold back the acquire embryo of the tiny pterosaurs inside . The squad ’s results have been release inScience Advances .
In world-wide , ivory seam containing such a deep array of pterosaur fossils are super rarified . This limits our understanding of the ancient animal ’s demeanour , admit how they were organise socially and how they develop .
All the pterosaur remains found in this prehistoric burial basis belong to to a single species calledHamipterus tianshanensis , which was actually only recently described by the same teama few years ago . The uncovering shows that the species in all likelihood gathered in single , large colonies , since the remains of no other species of flying reptile have been recovered from the site .
Despite the massive number of eggs found in a single mass , the investigator conclude that it likely play the offspring of multiple females , rather than just one hugely prolific individual . This is put up by the fact that the eggs vary in size , suggesting either a difference in the age of the batch or that some females laid larger ball , which can happen even in advanced reptilian . While this confirms colonial nesting of the pterosaurs , the squad are unable to determine a typical clutch sizing .
Before the preservation event , the animals were likely nesting on the sandlike banking company of a lakeshore , peradventure swallow their soft - beat eggs in the guts . When a particularly strong duster mishandle through , the nest were believably brag out into the lake , where they floated before slide down into the sediment at the bottom , where they stay for 120 million years .
The conceptus remains show that the animals grew comparatively slowly . While their legs were well developed , their wings were not . This evoke that once they think up , the newborns were unable to fly and their parents would have cared for them .
This incredible find has spread out our knowledge of flying reptile , and intimate that large colony of the animals were potential a common sight during the Early Cretaceous .
