Fossils of a new dromaeosaur date to the end of the Age of Dinosaurs
A wolf-sized warrior, kin to the fierce, feathered Velociraptor, prowled what is now New Mexico about 68 million years ago. Dineobellator notohesperus was a dromaeosaur, a group of swift, agile predators that is distantly related to the much larger Tyrannosaurus rex. The discovery of this new species suggests that dromaeosaurs were still diversifying, and even becoming better at pursuing prey, right up to the end of the Age of Dinosaurs, researchers say March 26 in Scientific Reports. That age came to an abrupt close at the end of the Cretaceous Period about 66 million years ago, when a mass extinction event wiped out all nonbird dinosaurs. A gap in the global fossil record for dromaeosaurs near the end of the Cretaceous had led some scientists to wonder whether the group was already in decline before the extinction, says Steven Jasinski, a paleontologist at the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg (SN: 4/21/16). The new find suggests otherwise. A skeletal reconstruction of D. notohesperus...