Chinese scientists discovered a fossil thought to be 120 million-years-old containing an embryo of a flying reptile that lived alongside the dinosaurs, crienglish.com reported Thursday.

It is the only known fossil of an embryo of a pterosaur, a winged lizard that evolved powered flight.

Wang Xiaolin and Zhou Zhonghe of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing said that dinosaur embryos have been discovered all over the world, but so far no pterosaur embryos have been reported.

The embryo is preserved in an almost complete egg and was found in the sediment of a lake in Liaoning in northeastern China that is known for its fossil riches.

The Chinese scientists said the Liaoning embryo has a wingspan of 10.6 inches, indicating that the embryo would have grown up into a medium-to-large pterosaur.

The earliest pterosaurs, the first known flying vertebrates, lived about 230 million years ago. They died out about 65 million years ago.

(CRI June 11, 2004)