What is thought to be the world’s smallest dinosaur has been discovered near Bexhill in East Sussex. The dinosaur, nicknamed ‘Ashdown maniraptoran’ after the brickworks where it was discovered, lived 145 to 100 million years ago during the early Cretaceous.
It weighed only 200 grams and was no more than 30 cms long. ‘Ashdown’ was discovered by British palaeontologists. The skull has not been recovered so it is difficult to be definite about what the dinosaur ate. However based on other small maniraptorans it was probably an omnivore.
The closest rival to ‘Ashdown” for the record of ‘world’s smallest dinosaur’, is Anchiornis from China. It is believed to be between 30 to 40 cms long, but the uncertainty makes an exact comparison difficult.
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