An international team of scientists has announced the discovery of an extraordinary fossilized nest in China. The clutch of ancient eggs belonged to a medium-sized adult oviraptor. The presumptive parent is part of the fossil, positioned in a crouch over two dozen eggs, at least seven of which were on the brink of hatching.
The ancient scene is unprecedented, and is evidence that dinosaurs were brooding parents, laying their eggs and incubating them.
“This kind of discovery - in essence, fossilized behavior - is the rarest of the rare in dinosaurs,” says paleontologist Matt Lamanna from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CMNH). “Though a few adult oviraptorids have been found on nests of their eggs before, no embryos have ever been found inside those eggs.”
This is no doubt an excellent flood fossil, more evidence of the reality of the Genesis Flood. Clearly, the parent and the eggs had to be buried very quickly by a great deal of water-borne sediment to be preserved the way they were preserved.