Remains of a 128 million-year-old buck-toothed dinosaur that looks like a cross between a rabbit and a prehistoric creature have been found in China, scientists said on Wednesday.
The dinosaur belongs to the theropod class of predators which includes the mighty Tyrannosaurus and is a relative of oviraptor, a small two-legged dinosaur.
Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing found the remains in the Yixian Formation, an area in northeast China famous for fossils of primitive mammals, birds and feathered dinosaurs.
Xing Xu, who described the find in the science journal Nature, said the dinosaur called Incisivosaurus gauthieri had protruding front teeth that set it apart from its other dinosaur relatives and shows that theropods were more diverse than scientists had thought.
"These dental features were previously unknown among theropods and suggest a herbivorous diet," he said in the Nature report.
(People’s Daily September 19, 2002)
