Tiny Texas Dinosaur Finally Has a Name Nearly 35 Years After Discovery in Treasure Trove of Fossils

About 120 million years ago, flocks of small dinosaurs bounded from plant to plant in an open floodplain southwest of what is now Fort Worth. They stood on two legs as they foraged for leaves and shoots. The smallest hatchlings were about the length of your hand, while the largest measured 9 feet from head to tail.“They were birdlike and very agile, slender, fast-running dinosaurs,” said Kate Andrzejewski, a postdoctoral fellow at Southern Methodist University and lead author of a highly anticipated new paper in the journal PLOS ONE that describes these creatures for the first time.The dinosaurs, which Andrzejewski and her colleagues named Convolosaurus marri, make up the largest trove of dinosaur fossils ever discovered in Texas. Convolosaurus means “flocking lizard” in Latin, and marri honors SMU alumnus and patron Ray Marr, president of Marr Oil & Gas.  Continue reading...