Discovery In Wyoming, North America: New Chicken-Sized, Carnivorous Dinosaur Is Oldest Unearthed

Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com – A team of palaeontologists from the UK and US have identified a one of a kind 150 million year old dinosaur skeleton. The specimen has been classified as a new species to science with the discovery also raising questions about the evolution of avian flight.

During the summer of 2001, the skeleton was discovered while removing overlying rock during the excavation of Wyoming’s longest dinosaur, Supersaurus.

This new chicken-sized, carnivorous dinosaur lived in a world populated by giants.

This new chicken-sized, carnivorous dinosaur lived in a world populated by giants. Image credit: University of Manchester

The quarry was located the steep slopes of the famous Morrison Formation. Most dinosaur fans will be familiar with other Morrison Formation celebrities such as Stegosaurus, Diplodocus and Allosaurus.

The specimen has been known in scientific circles for several years, but only by its nickname ‘Lori’, or as ‘the Lori specimen’ and now, it has received  its scientific name, Hesperornithoides miessleri. Hesperornithoides is a combination of ‘Hesper’, referring to the discovery in the American West, and ‘ornis’ for the bird-like form of the dinosaur, whereas the species name honors the Miessler family, whose land the specimen was found on and who have been avid supporters of the project.

Hesperornithoides is a highly terrestrial proto-bird, suggesting that many features we associate with being bird-like evolved in dinosaurs that lived out their lives on the ground.

“We wanted to expand the dataset used to test dinosaur-bird relationships, so we added hundreds of new species and tens of thousands of new characters,” lead author and Ph.D. candidate at The University of Wisconsin-Madison, Scott Hartman said in a press release.

“We found that Lori is a primitive member of a group of dinosaurs that includes Troodon, but perhaps more importantly we discovered that the smaller details of the family tree of bird-like dinosaurs isn’t quite as resolved as some researchers would claim.”

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Written by Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com Staff