Although our conception of a dinosaur is usually associated with a creature of considerable size, the truth is that there were very small ones. Proof of this is the smallest footprint found.
On November 15, 2018, Scientific Reports announced the discovery of didactyl traces (two fingers) with a mean length of 10.33 mm and a mean width of 4.15 mm .
Baby dinosaur?
These tiny prints, made by a sparrow-sized dinosaur, were found near the city of Jinju in South Korea. The tracks have been attributed to a new genus and species known only from fossil remains: Dromaeosauriformipes rarus .
Dromesaurs lived in the Cretaceous, between 145 and 66 million years ago.
To calculate the size of the dinosaur, the team measured the length of the footprint and multiplied the value by 4.5 to get an approximate hip height . Although the research team is not sure if the footprints were made by a small adult species or baby dinosaurs.
Birds evolved from dinosaurs, but it is possible that the origin of their feathers goes back even further in time, to the common ancestor of dinosaurs and pterosaurs . In fact, we can find truly gigantic birds: the largest bird of all time is the elephant bird. They lived in Madagascar, they became extinct a thousand years ago and the largest of all could reach up to three meters in height, reaching a mass of 860 kg.