Paleontologists Uncover New Species of Small, Speedy Dinosaur in Canada

When most people think of dinosaurs, they think of the giant, fierce animals that once roamed the Earth during the late Jurassic. Yet not all dinosaurs were the same--and not all were large. Researchers have now highlighted a difference class of dinosaurs that were small, speedy and ate plants through their discovery of a new species.

The new species of dinosaur, named Albertadromeus syntarsus, roamed the Earth about 77 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous in what is now southern Alberta in Canada. With its two fused lower leg bones, it was an agile two-legged runner. It likely used its high speed to help escape predators, since it was the smallest known plant-eating dinosaur in its ecosystem.

These remains are relatively unusual to find. Very few small-bodied dinosaurs that lived 77 million years ago have been discovered in North America. That's mainly due to the fact that smaller animals are less likely to be preserved than larger one, so this find is especially significant.

"We know from our previous research that there are preservational biases against the bones of these small dinosaurs," said Caleb Brown of the University of Toronto in a news release. "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."

In fact, the researchers didn't discover all of the remains for this new dinosaur. They only were able to find a partial hind leg and other fragmentary remains. From these small clues, they had to reconstruct the speedy runner, which was approximately five feet long and weighed about 30 pounds. Despite their small size, these small dinosaurs were an important part of the ecosystem in the past.

"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, one of the researchers, in a news release. "Our understanding of the structure of dinosaur ecosystems is depedent 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."

The findings are published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.