What’s for dinner? Yulong.
bwak bwak! I’m as big as dinosaur!
Yes, we’re still discovering new types of dinosaurs. A new one, called Yulong mini, apparently had offspring the size of chickens—the smallest dinosaurs ever found, according to a study in Naturwissenschaften, as cited on Discovery News.
Yulong was discovered in the Henan Province in central China, by archaeologist Junchang Lü and his colleagues. They are classified as oviraptorids, also known as “egg thieves.” However, in the 1990s, scientists came to the conclusion that these dinosaurs used other dinosaurs’ nests for brooding, instead of stealing eggs.
One interesting find with the study of Yulong is the fact that oviraptors may have been herbivores, and not carnivores, as previously thought. Additionally, Yulong babies most likely grew up without parents caring for them.
Yulong apparently looked like a chicken with a tail, though it could grow to 26 feet long. But Yulong is not an ancestor of birds, since all non-avian dinosaurs went extinct about 65 millions years ago. However, Yulong not only looked like a chicken, but it also was popular prey, and T. rex and other carnivorous dinosaurs enjoyed eating it. Too bad we’ll never know if it tasted like chicken too.
