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Journalism of Courage
Scientists have discovered the fossilised skeleton of a baby dinosaur representing a new meat-eating species that roamed 161 million years ago during the late Jurassic Period.
Fossil remains found by a George Washington University biologist in northwestern China have been identified as a new species of small theropod,or meat-eating,dinosaur.
“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,” said Clark. The dinosaur is named Aorun zhaoi,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’sbones and they showed that the animal was less than a year old when it died on the banks of a stream,” said Choiniere. Aorun 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. This is the fifth new theropod discovered at the Wucaiwan locality by the team,co-led by Clark and Dr Xu Xing of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
