Early meat-eating dinosaur unearthed
Pint-sized, two-legged runner dates back to the dawn of the dinos
The dinosaur family tree just added a new relative: a small, nipping, meat-eating creature dating back to dinosaurs’ earliest days.
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Unearthed in 230-million-year-old rocks in Argentina, in life this bipedal animal would have been as tall as a 7-year-old but as light as a house cat. Paleontologists announced the new dinosaur, dubbed Eodromaeus, or “dawn runner,” in the Jan. 14 Science.
Eodromaeus joins its kin Eoraptor, a similar-sized dinosaur known to have lived in the same time and place. In fact, when researchers first unearthed Eodromaeus they thought the bones belonged to Eoraptor. Yet the two dinosaurs’ superficial resemblance belies a crucial difference: one ate plants while the other ate meat.