Environment

Tiny Carnivorous Dinosaur, Hesperonychus Elizabethae, Discovered

by Tina Kells | March 16, 2009 at 01:51 pm

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A tiny carnivorous dinosaur the size of a squirrel has been discovered by researchers in Alberta, Canada. Called Hesperonychus Elizabethae, the teeny little meat eating dinosaur is the smallest prehistoric creature of its type every discovered in North America.

Called Hesperonychus Elizabethae after Elizabeth "Betsy" Nicholls, the paleontologist who first discovered the small dino bones. The late Elizabeth Nicholls was the curator of the Royal Tyrell Museum in Drumheller. Hesperonychus means "western claw" in Latin and represents the part of Canada where the bones were found.

Elizabeth Nicholls first discovered the small claws and pelvis in 1982 near Alberta's world famous Dinosaur Park Formation. The tiny bones were catalogued and stored at the University of Alberta shortly after their discovery only to be forgotten until 2007 when they were rediscovered by Calgary researcher Nicholas Longrich.

When the small bones were first discovered in 1982 it was assumed that they were the bones of a young dinosaur which is why they were stored away without notice. Longrich uncovered the stores fossils in 2007 and launched a study into their origins. Through that study he discovered it was not a juvenile specimen of a known species but rather an entirely new discovery.

The kitten-sized predator identified by paleontologists at the University of Calgary and the University of Alberta is the smallest carnivorous dinosaur ever found in North America. The next smallest meat-eating dinosaur ever found on the continent was about the size of a wolf.

"Until we found this animal, basically we had no evidence for any small carnivores being present in North America," said University of Calgary researcher Nicholas Longrich, in a video released by the university on Monday.

Longrich and the University of Alberta's Philip Currie have written an article describing the velociraptor-like dinosaur, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

The tiny, bird-like predator ran on two legs and was about half the size of a housecat, weighing less than two kilograms, and standing about as tall as an average wastebasket. It likely hunted near the ground in marshes and forests for insects, small mammals, amphibians and "maybe even baby dinosaurs," Longrich said.

The researchers have given the dinosaur the scientific name Hesperonychus Elizabethae.