New Dino May Be World's Smallest

Posted by : Unknown 8 oct 2011

Paleontologists working in the U.K. have unearthed what may be the world's smallest known non-avian dinosaur.
Nicknamed the Ashdown maniraptoran, the dinosaur measured about a foot in length and weighed just seven ounces.
Technically, the world's smallest dinosaurs are modern birds, with the two-inch-long Cuban bee hummingbird being the tiniest known of them all.

In this illustration, a big Darwinopterus hunts a small feathered Anchiornis, another contender for the title of world's smallest dinosaur.

A new species of carnivorous non-avian dinosaur, described in the latest issue of Cretaceous Research, could be the world’s smallest known dinosaur.
The tiny dinosaur, dubbed the "Ashdown maniraptoran," measures about a foot in length and was unearthed in the United Kingdom. It lived during the Lower Cretaceous, a period lasting from 145 to 100 million years ago.
"It perhaps weighed as little as 200 grams (seven ounces)," co-author Darren Naish told Discovery News. "Like other maniraptoran theropods, this would have been a small, feathered, bird-like bipedal dinosaur with a fairly short tail, long neck, long slim hind legs, and feathered clawed forelimbs."