'Baby Louie' Dinosaur Parentage Incredibly Reveals A New 'Baby-Dragon' Species
After 25 years of discovery, scientists finally found Baby Louie's true lineage. In the report, it's an entirely new species of dinosaurs from China. It's supposedly from the family of oversize oviraptorosaurs or Beibeilong Sinensis (baby-dragon).
According to the Verge, Baby Louie is clearly a new species of oviraptorosaurs. Its size and characteristics differ with what the recent discovered Gigantoraptor has. To take note, it's the closest kin to the infant dinosaur.
Because of Baby Louie's bizarre size and shape, University of Calgary professor Darla Zelenitsky and Henan Geological Museum scientist Hanyong Pu doubted its oviraptorosaurs relations.Though, its egg and toothless lower jawbone are another things.
"They would look like some kind of crazy turkey on steroids,"Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History paleontologist Pete Makovicky says. "They're some of the more bizarre-looking dinosaurs," he added.
The discovery of North Central China Gigantoraptor became the key for Baby Louie. With it, Zelenitsky and the others finally have something to compare to him. The orphaned dinosaur's egg size and uniqueness fit well with it.
So, the scientists also noted that Baby Louie still has a difference from the other dinosaur. This is where they named his parentage as Beibeilong Sinensis of oviraptorosaurs.
In another report by USA Today, the celebrated dinosaur Baby Louie got featured first in National Geographic last 1996. During that time no one knows yet its real parentage.
The fossilized egg has supposedly been smuggled from China after its discovery. When the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences Palaeontologist Lü Junchang and his co-authors eventually met Baby Louie that they studied his true origin of China's baby-dragons.
"For many years it was a mystery about what kind of dinosaur laid these enormous eggs," Darla Zelenitsky said. "Thanks to this fossil, we now know that these eggs were laid by a gigantic oviraptorosaur," she continued.