Was discovered the tiniest dinosaur in the world. The creation, like a bird no bigger than 2 inches, looks like «if he died only yesterday.»
Known as Oculudentavis khaungraae, dinosaur, bird, was found in Burmese amber. He may have been living in Myanmar 100 million years ago, according to a study published in Nature. The creation died when his head fell drop of resin from the tree that protected his skull the whole time.
Huge news, or rather, tiny news
A new, hummingbird sized avialean in an amber found in Myanmar, given the name Oculudentavis khaungraae
I usually don’t get too excited over the amber stuff, but this is amazinghttps://t.co/jsctJqUGDH pic.twitter.com/RMmI3swvzZ
— Armin Reindl (@ArminReindl) March 11, 2020
«Conservation of vertebrates in amber are quite rare, and this allows us to look at the world of dinosaurs and the smallest of its representatives,» said the study’s lead author Lars Schmitz. «Its unique anatomical features indicate the smallest and one of the most ancient ever found birds».
Oculudentavis khaungraae probably weighed less than an ounce and was on a par with the smallest bird alive today, the Hummingbird-bee, which lives only in Cuba. Despite its tiny size, scientists believe the dinosaur was a predator and ate insects.
The dinosaur had wings, a pair of bulging eyes, like a lizard, and a beak with about 30 teeth that can be seen through a computer-generated 3-D image. It is unclear whether the dinosaur was able to fly, said one of the study’s authors Professor Jingma o’connor, paying attention to «odd» and «imperfect» features of the dinosaur.
The discovery of a dinosaur that was not there in the fossil record gives scientists new insight into how birds evolved, including how they decreased in size during evolution.
«No other group of living birds does not demonstrate a similar small skull in adults,» explained Schmitz. «The discovery shows us that we only threw a cursory glance at what looked like a tiny vertebrates during the age of dinosaurs.»
