Colorado Dinosaur (Discovery)

Fossils dated in Jurassic period, in about 160 million up to 145 million years ago, was discovered in Colorado in 1970s and kept in Los Angeles the Natural History Museum, according to New York Times article. They’ve now been studied and described by Richard J. Butler from Bavarian State Collection for Paleontology of Germany and his colleagues.

Last September 2009, researchers discovered a mini-rex which is according to them, a tiny example of a Tyrannosaurus discovered in China. This month, paleontologists are reported another smallest dinosaur found in North America.

Discoverers named this as Fruitadens Haagarorum which has a body length of only 30 inches and weighed of about 2 pounds. According the the researchers:

Fruitadens is also the smallest ornithischian dinosaur ever found. Ornithischians, one of the two main groups of dinosaurs, generally ate plants, and “plant eaters require a fairly large gut,” said Luis M. Chiappe, director of the museum’s Dinosaur Institute and a co-author of a paper describing the finding in The Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. The small size of Fruitadens, as well as a lack of grinding wear on its teeth, Dr. Chiappe added, suggest that it probably supplemented its diet with small animals and insects.

Fruitadens is another subgroup of Ornithischians and Heterodontosaurids which survived in about more than 100 million of years.