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Subject: One of the tiniest non-avian dinosaurs known From: Ursustyrannis posted Wed, Oct 21 2009, 12:37am  North America's tiniest dinosaur, *Fruitadens* "-- The fossil bones of a dinosaur so tiny it could dart between the legs of its huge neighbors are being assembled at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and scientists there are excited about its history. The little creature weighed less than 2 pounds and was only 28 inches long from its fierce little jaws to the end of its long tail. Although its name is Fruitadens - fruit teeth - it probably ate all kinds of food. It likely ate plants most of the time, but bugs and other small animals, as well, said Luis Chiappe, director of the museum's Dinosaur Institute. The first details of the dinosaur's life and evolution are being published this week in the British scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, and Chiappe is overseeing construction of a detailed, full-scale model of the animal that will take another two years to complete, he said in a phone interview Tuesday. "It's the smallest species of dinosaur ever found in North America," Chiappe said, "and it lived about 150 million years ago - one of the most primitive of all the dinosaurs, living right at the base of the dinosaur evolutionary tree." Bones of four individual creatures were found near Fruita, Colo., more than 30 years ago by dinosaur hunters from Cal State Long Beach. The Los Angeles County museum has stored them ever since. A team of specialists, including Chiappe and led by Richard Butler of the Bavarian State Paleontology Collection in Munich, has analyzed them and described their technical details. "It tells you once again how dinosaurs can range in size, from 2-pound animals like Fruitadens to creatures weighing 50 tons or more like plant-eating sauropods like Brachiosaurus, or the meat-eaters like the theropod Allosaurus." The slightly built, agile little dinosaur belongs to a class of creatures known as heterodontosaurids, whose unusually shaped teeth - some sharp and some leaf-shaped - indicate it was most probably omnivorous, Chiappe said. The tiny creature's full name is Fruitadens haagarorum. The species name honors the president of the museum's board of trustees, Paul Haaga and his family." This dinosaur is an interesting critter indeed! Remember, mammals didn't develop erect gaits until the Late Jurassic/Early Cretaceous. After that time, "Modern" erect-gaited mammals or "Therian" (Eutherian and Metatherian) mammals began to oust out many archaic small dinosaurs, crocodiles and archaic sprawling egg-laying, venomous-spurred mammals from insectivorous, carnivorous, omnivorous and herbivorous niches by the latest Cretaceous. Subject: Re: One of the tiniest non-avian dinosaurs known From: Rainbow Medicine Man posted Wed, Oct 21 2009, 8:14am  Looks like a chicken... Subject: Re: One of the tiniest non-avian dinosaurs known From: MJLehde posted Fri, Oct 23 2009, 9:44am  Funny, I was just thinking that was probably what they tasted like. Subject: Re: One of the tiniest non-avian dinosaurs known From: riverrat posted Fri, Oct 23 2009, 9:57pm  It could be nothing more than a hatchling of an already known species. Paleontologists are too eager to discover a new species that appears to be the beginning of dinosaur evolution. Subject: Re: One of the tiniest non-avian dinosaurs known From: cloudyboy87 posted Fri, Oct 23 2009, 11:39pm  Ya...I think that they may be too eager to classify things..I think that some "species" or "subspecies" may in reality be specimens of already known species or subspecies. But who knows. maybe it'll be announced one day. Oh well. Subject: Re: One of the tiniest non-avian dinosaurs known From: MJLehde posted Sat, Oct 24 2009, 8:08am  I seem to recall that there is still a debate very much like that raging around some undersized T-Rex fossils. Some think it is a new dwarf form of Rex while others think it is simply a T-Rex that died young. Over so many million years deciding by fossile fragmants how old an animal was at the time of it's death and whether that animal was full grown can be tricky. Subject: Re: One of the tiniest non-avian dinosaurs known From: cloudyboy87 posted Fri, Nov 13 2009, 5:27pm  Ya, it kind of hearkens back to something I'm familiar with; trying to pin the age of a box turtle by counting the growth rings on its scutes, or trying to do the same to a rattlesnake by counting its rattles, neither work because of all kinds of variables and the only real way to know somethings exact age is by cataloging it from birth. Besides, many animals don't achieve their full potential because they turn out to be "runts". So whose to say its a dwarf something when everything is identical to "textbook case" fossils except size and maybe a few other things that can be variable within individuals just like in humans or anything else?.. Besides Taxonomy is politics lol

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