World’s smallest dinosaur isn't actually a dinosaur

[FfFfFfFF 58,371]

The amber-encased fossil was touted as the smallest fossil dinosaur ever found. Known from little more than a peculiar skull, and described early in 2020, Oculudentavis khaungraae was presented as a hummingbird-sized toothed bird—an avian dinosaur that fluttered around prehistoric Myanmar about 100 million years ago. Today, in a peer-reviewed paper published in Current Biology, scientists have confirmed this small creature was no bird at all.

The original Oculudentavis fossil is preserved in a chunk of amber from the southeast Asian country of Myanmar. When it was presented in Nature in March of 2020, outside researchers quickly pointed out that Oculudentavis was not really a bird. The fossil seemed to represent a small reptile that simply resembled a bird thanks to a large eye opening in the skull and a narrow, almost beak-like snout.

The original Nature paper was retracted and a reanalysis of the paper’s dataset by another team supported the idea that the fossil wasn’t a bird. A second specimen soon turned up and appeared in a pre-print the same year, adding evidence that these fossils were far from the avian perch on the tree of life. That study has since evolved into the Current Biology paper on what Oculudentavis might be, and it suggests that this bird was really a lizard.

Organisms preserved in amber are difficult to study from the outside, but the team created CT scans of the reptile inside the second specimen and also reanalyzed the scans from the original specimen. The second fossil differs in some ways from the first, and so Bolet and colleagues gave the second, slightly-smushed fossil a new name—Oculudentavis naga, named after the Naga people who live in the vicinity of Myanmar’s amber mines.

Then again, outside experts like Michael Caldwell of the University of Alberta suggest, Oculudentavis might not be a lizard at all but something much more ancient and unusual.

Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/worlds-smallest-dinosaur-revealed-be-mystery-reptile-180977975/

[FfFfFfFF 58,371]

@sarahb You wished the amber had full feathers preserved in it when the fossil was discovered. Now we know it was not really the case. 

 

[LOVEDRUG 11,288]

it's

[River 127,778]

is it a bird? a lizard? a dino?

no it's superman

[GagaSine 7,464]

I love prehistoric animals. As a kid I had a book about ancient species and it was so fascinating to me and still is. So cool!

[sarahb 17,207]

2 hours ago, FfFfFfFF said:

@sarahb You wished the amber had full feathers preserved in it when the fossil was discovered. Now we know it was not really the case. 

 

Huh, well there you go, that explains the lack of feathers  

[chun li 3,056]

My god look at how many mosquitoes in that single droplet.

Imagine how many there were back then