A team of paleontologists from Canada and the U.S. has discovered a new small, fast, plant eating dinosaur.
A team of paleontologists from the University of Toronto, Royal Ontario Museum, Cleveland Museum of Natural History and University of Calgary has identified a new species of dinosaurs that was fast, small and herbivorous.
The species has been named Albertadromeus syntarsus and scientists have deduced from its hind leg and other skeletal elements that it was a fast runner. The species reportedly weighed approximately 16 kgs and was 1.6 meters long. Researchers stated that because the dinosaur was a fast runner, it was able to avoid predation by the many species of meat-eating dinosaurs that lived alongside in the Late Cretaceous era, about 77 million years ago
Caleb Brown of the University of Toronto, lead author of the study, says that many smaller species of dinosaurs are lost to mankind because they are less likely to be preserved than bigger dinosaurs as their bones decompose before being fossilized.
"We know from our previous research that there are preservational biases against the bones of these small dinosaurs," said Brown. "We are now starting to uncover this hidden diversity, and although skeletons of these small ornithopods are both rare and fragmentary, our study shows that these dinosaurs were more abundant in their ecosystems than previously thought."
"Albertadromeus may have been close to the bottom of the dinosaur food chain but without dinosaurs like it you'd not have giants like T. rex," said Michael Ryan. "Our understanding of the structure of dinosaur ecosystems is dependent on the fossils that have been preserved. Fragmentary, but important, specimens like that of Albertadromeus suggest that we are only beginning to understand the shape of dinosaur diversity and the structure of their communities."
