Posted on behalf of Ashley Yeager

Think dinosaur and the great T-Rex or towering Triceratops probably comes to mind. But size is not everything. Albertonykus borealis, a newly discovered dinosaur that roamed Alberta, Canada about 70 million years ago was the size of a chick, and is believed to be the smallest dinosaur to have lived in North America (press release).

Having jaws shaped like needlenose pliers, pick-like claws and bird feet, A. borealis was “really bizarre” and looked like it was a “creation of Dr. Seuss,” Nicholas Longrich, a paleontology research associate at the University of Calgary, told the Calgary Herald. The creature looks like different animals stitched together, he said in the article.

The tiny dino’s bones were unearthed in 2002 when paleontologist Philip Currie of the University of Alberta was digging at Dry Island Buffalo Jump Provincial Park, which is about 175 kilometres northeast of Calgary. But, the fossils were not what Currie was looking for at the time and were ultimately put in a drawer at the Royal Tyrrell Museum. Three years later, Longrich was going through the museum’s drawers, saw an interesting pick-like claw bone and determined it most likely belonged to a new type of dinosaur.

Now in the August 2008 issue of Cretaceous Research, Currie and Longrich describe the new species’ bones and explain how the tiny dinosaur most likely fed on termites by using its small but powerful forelimbs.

Longrich said in a press release that:

Proportionately, the forelimbs are shorter than in a Tyrannosaurus but they are powerfully-built, so they seem to have served a purpose. They are built for digging but too short to burrow, so we think they may have been used to rip open logs in search of insects.

Reuters notes A. borealis may have been prey for Velociraptors, T-Rex’s smaller cousins. Longrich also told the newswire that he thought the find emphasizes that “there’s a lot more waiting to be discovered” in museum drawers.