Student finds smallest dino in North America

By Matthew Rochon

Nick Longrich, a University of Calgary research associate, holds claim to finding not only the smallest dinosaur to date in North America, but also a rare insectivore.


The Albertonykus borealis– “Albertonykus” means “Alberta Claw”– was discovered a few years ago, but only recently made public. The fossils were dug up in an Albertosaurus bone bed sometime between 2000 and 2003. They were labelled and stored away among other fossils from the dig until Longrich, years later, found himself sifting through them.


“It started out as just being curious about what was in the cabinets and kind of evolved into a larger project,” he explained.


He recognized that some of the fossils had striking similarities to those of the Mongolian Mononykinae species. Upon further analysis, he concluded they evolved from the South American Alberto-nykus and later led to the Mononykinae species.


Longrich’s discovery gives paleontologists a means to better analyze the evolution of the lineage, its adaptive growth and its interdependent migration from South America to Mongolia. It offers important insights including that the lineage at some point crossed the Bering land bridge.


Longrich stressed the importance of the discovery because it supports the idea that dinosaurs are much more diverse, both in size and ethology, than generally believed by paleontologists in the past. Dinosaurs, like modern animals, diversified to fill all sorts of niches. In the Albertonykus’ case, it filled the uncommon niche of surviving off insects like termites.


With its small, powerful forelimbs and giant claws, the Albertonykus had a morphology specialized to tear apart trees and expose the goodies within. They most closely resembled that of modern insect-consuming animals like aardvarks, armadillos and anteaters. The creature, which only stood as high as a chicken, is also characterized as having a slender neck and a long, skinny tail.


The chicken-like dinosaur ripping through the ancestors of lusty Alberta trees might not have been alone. Longrich discovered four or five new dinosaurs that are yet to be unveiled to the public.


“I can’t go into too much detail about what we’ve got, but [it’s] some pretty exciting stuff,” he said. “At least as exciting as this, if not more so.”