‘They’re sort of neat little guys’
New species considered smallest on fossil record
REGINA – After travelling to China in 2017 to see the unique specimen, a Saskatchewan paleontologist has co-authored a new research paper on the smallest dinosaur on fossil record.
“The skull’s only about 1.4 cm long and most of that is actually a long pointy snout full of teeth,” said Ryan McKellar of the Royal Saskatchewan Museum.
Smaller than the modern bee hummingbird, the 99 million-year-old fossil — comprised of bone in amber — was found in an amber mine in Myanmar and was purchased at an amber market in China by local researchers.
Since visiting China to see the critter, McKellar’s team has been studying CT scan data and images, surmising details about the primitive tooth bird like where the specimen was encased in amber.
“They’re sort of neat little guys that scurried around on tree trunks … that still had claws in their wings and teeth in their snout,” McKellar said in an RSM Instagram post.
Essentially a cross between a bird and a dinosaur, the skull dinosaur was on the side of a tree when it was encased in amber. They know that because the amber didn’t have tree litter or insects commonly found on the forest floor inside and because it did include fine layers indicative of amber resin flows on the side of trees.
McKellar said most of the specimens his team has worked on in the past have been the size of sparrows or robins.
“This particular specimen is really neat because it’s so small,” he said, adding the amount of detail that has been preserved is “fantastic.”
“You can still see the teeth preserved within the snout. There are even these little bony rings that support the eyes called sclera and if you look at the roof of the mouth there are little bumps … that are used to grip prey almost like the ridges on the inside of our mouth,” he said.
It documents the new species, which was named Oculudentavis khaungraae gen. et sp. nov. and appears to represent the smallest known dinosaur of the Mesozoic era.
“This discovery highlights the potential of amber deposits to reveal the lowest limits of vertebrate body size,” says the paper, co-authored by Lida Xing, Jingmai K. O’Connor, Lars Schmitz, Luis M. Chiappe, Qiru Yi and Gang Li.
Images of the amber and an enlarged 3D printed model of the skill is on display in the RSM lobby. The RSM is one of the few labs worldwide that studies feathers and skeletal material in amber.