This ancient dinosaur was no bigger than a hummingbird
A tiny, toothed bird that lived 99 million years ago appears to be the smallest known Mesozoic dinosaur, an era from about 252 million to 66 million years ago. The creature’s 12-millimeter-long skull was found encased in a chunk of amber originally discovered in northern Myanmar, researchers report March 11 in Nature. Of modern birds — the only dinosaurs still living today — the bee hummingbird is the smallest. The new species, dubbed Oculudentavis khaungraae, was similar in size. But three-dimensional images of the fossilized skull created with computed tomography, a type of X-ray imaging, revealed that the Mesozoic bird had little else in common with today’s nectar-sipping hummingbirds. Instead, the images reveal a surprising number of teeth, suggesting the little bird was a predator, the researchers report. “It had more teeth than any other Mesozoic bird, regardless of size,” says paleontologist Jingmai O’Connor at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology...