Dinosaurs are known to be enormous reptiles. But it is known that all such reptiles were not that huge. A group of palaeontologists have claimed to have discovered the smallest dinosaur of all times. They have comes across a 99 million year old fossilized bird-like skull in Myanmar.
They have named the fozzilised bird as Oculudentavis khaungrade. Nature in its latest edition published the discovery. The discovery also showed that small body sizes in birds evolved much earlier than earlier thought.
The researchers said that the bird could only be about half an inch long, which could be derived from its tiny teeth to the delicate ringed bones of its eyes. The fossilized bird also had teeth. But now birds do not have teeth.
The skull of the foossilised bird was dominated by two enormous eye sockets that contained rings of bone which formed the eye skeletons. The opening at the centre was narrow that restricted access for ‘light into the eye. This showed Oculudentavis was very much active in day light, said co-author Lars Schmitz, a palaeontologist at Claremont McKenna, Scripps and Pitzer colleges. Schmitz said that the delicate bones of each eye in the fossil found were in place and only slightly deformed.
They also said that the individual bones of the ring had a lizard like shape. The researchers said that Oculudentavis would have been about the size of a hummingbird. This shows that it was the tiniest Mesozoic dinosaur discovered until now.
