Share
11th December 2010
05:42pm GMT
A fossil of the world's smallest dinosaur has been found by an amateur fossil-hunter - two years after he discarded the discovery in his bedside drawer.
51-year-old Dave Brockhurst first found the fossilised vertebrae of the world's smallest non-flying dinosaur, dubbed the Ashdown Maniraptoran at a brickworks near his home at East Sussex over two years ago.
Thinking nothing of it, he kept the fossil in his bedside drawer, until eventually taking it to two palaeontologists that were able to discern the shape and size of its long-extinct owner.
"I knew there was something about it that was different but I had no idea what it would turn out to be," Mr Brockhurst told the Daily Mail.
'It lay in my drawer for a while because I didn't know what to do with it." The 7oz dinosaur is believed to have hopped on two legs and is thought to have been no bigger than a loaf of bread during its existence in the Lower Cretaceous period.
"I couldn't believe it when they told me it was a completely new species," added a delighted Mr Brockhurst of his discovery.
"And then to find out it was possibly the world's smallest dinosaur. Amazing." Though just a tiny vertebrae has been found, the paleontologists that inspected the fossil believe that even more bones of the dinosaur will be found in the coming years.
