A dozen tiny, three-toed footprints were discovered in rocks about 120 million years old in coastal South Korea.
The tracks, no bigger than one and a half centimeters long, were originally made in mud, now hardened to shale, along a Jurassic riverbank. The tracks resemble those of therapod dinosaurs, the bipedal carnivores.
These tracks are not necessarily evidence of a new species of diminuative dinosaur; paleontologists previously found larger fossil footprints in the area and so these miniature tracks were probably made by a hatchling.
The size of the tracks can be used to estimate the size of the hatchling, which was probably no more than 4 centimeters at the hip. For now, these are the smallest dinosaur tracks known.
Photo credit: Kyung Soo Kim of Chinju National University of Education in Jinju, South Korea
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