Student finds NA's smallest dinosaur
By Kirsten Goruk
CUP Alberta and Northern Bureau Chief
March 25, 2009
EDMONTON (CUP) – It was an adventure that began back in 1982, but 27 years later, professor Philip Currie is able to say with certainty that he and his colleague have identified the smallest dinosaur known to have roamed North America.
The discovery and identification of the carnivorous Hesperonychus elizabethae – a species so small it would fit in the palm of one’s hand – will be published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week.
Originally thought to be a bone fragment from a lizard, the piece was found by a University of Calgary student who was hired by the University of Alberta to work in Alberta’s Dinosaur Provincial Park.
“She was looking mostly for smaller animals, and the small fossils she found, she thought probably belonged to a lizard,” said Currie, a U of A paleontologist and biological sciences professor.
“It came up here and everybody thought it was not quite right for a lizard, but at the same time, nobody really knew what it was. It just sat here.”
There was no real thought given to its origin until the late 1990s when, says Currie, a feathered skeleton named Microraptor was uncovered in China. A student of his at the time was the one who made the connection between the two skeletons.
“[He] was going through our collections one day and realized that [the bone] is almost identical to the one in China in terms of hip structure. So he flagged it and we had it prepared and yes, it was in fact, answering many questions,” Currie said.
Despite missing a complete skeleton, the ability to compare their fragment to the specimen in China allowed for a concise comparison of each structure.
Alberta has provided paleontologists with more than enough skeletons over the years, but as Currie explains, many of those smaller specimens remain incomplete.
However, simply examining the larger and whole skeletons significantly narrows the field of study when it comes to fully understanding life during the period when dinosaurs wandered Alberta.
“Normally we aren’t worried about it too much; we’ve just gone after the good skeletons and that’s that. But it only gives you one side of the story. Big skeletons preserve a lot more easily than small things because you don’t have things eating them, you don’t have slivers that are ripping the pieces apart,” Currie said.
For those researchers still ingrained in the area of Dinosaur Park, even after over 100 years of study, Currie believes that discoveries like this prove that there is still a lot to be learned.
“We want to know what’s going on with the other side of the ecosystem; all the small animals and that includes not just dinosaurs, but all the things living with the dinosaurs. We wouldn’t even know about them if we just went after the big skeletons,” he said.
Research geared towards these smaller specimens has Currie excited about the potential of new discoveries which could further shed light on Alberta’s past.
“It’s pretty cool that if you like dinosaurs, you don’t have to work on the big ones all the time. You can work on things that’ll fit in the palm of your hand,” he said.
For Currie, Hesperonychus elizabethae is the first of many skeletons that will eventually reach the surface.
“I think it’s an area that’s going to see a lot more research in the future simply because as time goes on, we’re discovering more and more of these small dinosaurs. I’m willing to bet that in a couple years we’re going to have more small dinosaur species than big dinosaurs species.”
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