Fossils Of World's Smallest Dinosaur Discovered Outside Fruita, Colorado

[eleny]

Fossil bones housed at a Los Angeles museum belong to the smallest dinosaur discovered in North America, scientists said Tuesday.

The newly identified creature weighed less than two pounds and stood about 4 inches tall. From head to tail, it measured a little over 2 feet long, said Luis Chiappe, director of the Dinosaur Institute of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County where the fossil bones are stored.

The dinosaur "would have looked like a roadrunner on steroids," Chiappe said.

It likely ate plants and hunted bugs during the late Jurassic period, about 150 million years ago. It was so tiny and fast that it probably darted between the legs of larger dinosaurs, researchers said.

Bones of four individuals – including skull, arm and leg fragments – were discovered three decades ago in Fruita in western Colorado and kept at the museum.


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/21/fossils-of-worlds-smalles_n_328496.html

[Stevenmarc]

1. Adam and Eve's Chihuahua

[eleny]

3. Looks to me like it could bite an ankle pretty good

[Mike Nelson]

2. At last!

...one we could live with. Let's hope this is the one we discover the material to clone.

[eleny]

4. Maybe, if it liked to eat earwigs

We had way too many of those this summer. But I can see us doing battle if it got near my perennials!