Tyrannosaurus rex and other massive Mesozoic creatures might have had a little predator nipping at their ankles and pilfering their young. Scientists have described the smallest dinosaur in North America, and it was a carnivore.
The new carnivorous dinosaur was smaller than a modern housecat and likely hunted insects, small mammals and other prey through the swamps and forests of the late Cretaceous Period (75 million years ago, precisely) in southeastern Alberta, Canada.
Weighing approximately 4 pounds (2 kilograms) and standing about a foot and a half tall (50 centimeters), Hesperonychus elizabethae resembled a miniature version of the bipedal predator Velociraptor, to which it was closely related. Hesperonychus walked on two legs and had razor-like claws and an enlarged sickle-shaped claw on its second toe. It had a slender build and slender head with dagger-like teeth.
Read the rest at LiveScience.
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