One of the smallest dinosaur skulls ever discovered has been identified by a team of scientists from London, Cambridge and Chicago, including Gates alumna Laura Porro (2004) who is now a post-doc at the University of Chicago.
The skull would have been only 45mm long, and belonged to a very young heterodontosaurus, an early dinosaur that may represent a transition phase between carnivorous ancestors and herbivorous descendants.
Heterodontosauri lived during the Early Jurassic period, about 190 million years ago, in South Africa, and the skull was found in the Iziko South African Museum in Cape Town.
The researchers’ full report is published in the autumn issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
