An international team of paleontologists has described a new species of theropod dinosaur from the Middle-Late Jurassic of Xinjiang, China.
Skull of Aorun zhaoi (James Clark / George Washington University)
The skull, mandible and partial skeleton of the new dinosaur, named Aorun zhaoi, were unearthed in a remote region of Xinjiang in 2006.
According to a paper published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, Aorun zhaoi was about 3 feet (1 m) long and weighed 3 pounds.
“All that was exposed on the surface was a bit of the leg. We were pleasantly surprised to find a skull buried in the rock too,” explained co-author Prof James Clark of the George Washington University.
Aorun zhaoi lived more than 161 million years ago, in the earliest part of the Late Jurassic Period. Its small, numerous teeth suggest that it would have eaten prey like lizards and small relatives of today’s mammals and crocodilians.
The dinosaur is named after the Dragon King in the Chinese epic tale Journey to the West. It wasn’t necessarily a small dinosaur species, though, because Aorun was still a youngster when it became a fossil.
“We were able to look at microscopic details of Aorun’s bones and they showed that the animal was less than a year old when it died on the banks of a stream,” said lead author Jonah Choiniere of the University of the Witwatersrand, the George Washington University and the American Museum of Natural History.
Source: sci.news
