Ashdown Maniraptoran
Ashdown Maniraptoran
AT just 1ft long, it won’t have been much use in a fight with a Tyrannosaurus rex.
But what the Ashdown Maniraptoran lacks in size, it makes up for in importance – as the smallest dinosaur ever discovered.
Amateur fossil hunter Dave Brockhurst stumbled on its remains in a disused brickworks.
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Not realising its significance, he put it in his bedside drawer for two years before contacting experts. The 51-year-old collector said: “I couldn’t believe it when they told me it was a new species.
“And then to find out it was possibly the world’s smallest dinosaur – amazing!”
The 7oz feathered Ashdown Maniraptoran would have hopped around on two legs like a bird and probably had a short tail, long neck and clawed arms and legs
It would have been the smallest non-flying dinosaur and lived during the Lower Cretaceous period, between 100 million and 145 million years ago.
Mr Brockhurst found the fossilised vertebrae near his home in Bexhill, East Sussex.
Palaeontologists Dr Darren Naish and Dr Steve Sweetman were able to piece together the dinosaur’s likely shape and size.
Because its skull has not yet been unearthed, they cannot be sure what it ate.
Dr Naish said: “It was perhaps an omnivore, eating small animals, including insects, as well as leaves and fruit.” The researchers now hope to find more fragments of the tiny creature.