The Mini Dinosaurs from the Harz Mountains

FiReaNGeL writes "When unusually small dinosaur fossils were found in a quarry on the northern edge of the Harz Mountains in 1998, it was initially assumed that these were the remains of a group of young dinosaurs. This was a fallacy, as the Bonn palaeontologist, Dr. Martin Sander, recently discovered. At a maximum estimated weight of one tonne, they were only a fiftieth the weight of their closest relatives, the brachiosaurs, and thus by far the smallest of the giant dinosaurs which have ever been found."

Comments

Re:'Conspiracy' theory

[MichaelSmith]

Anyone ever notice how as you go further and further back in history animals get bigger and bigger compared to their present day counterparts?

• Big stuff lasts longer in the ground and is easier to see when you go digging
• Human beings kill the biggest animals around for food, this being the most efficent way to get dinner. Over time big things become extinct.

Re:It's hotly contested.

[callistra.moonshadow]

There are many theories running rampant about the so-called Hobbits, from misidentification to the reduced brain hypothesis. Many pressures in an isolated environment can create enough genetic pressure to lead to odd physical changes. Examples are twin studies of Andes Mountains dwelling children. When separated, one twin staying in the higher elevations and the other growing up at sea level researchers have noted drastic differences in the physical morphology. These observations hold true even though the monozygotic twins are genetically identical. The Andes-dwelling child had a large barrel chest and was shorter. The child living at or near seal level was not barrel-chested and taller. Most creatures within the animal kingdom have within their very genetic code a certain level of plasticity that we've seen demonstrated again and again as in the example above. It is not that surprising that there might have been some recessive gene that was expressed in an isolated population. It may not have been due to brain-reduction, but simply local pressures. Until they can actually identify some kind of smoking gun that can state with pretty good clarity that they can prove that these individuals didn't make the toolkit discovered, I'm more open to the possibilities.

Smallest sauropod, most likely

[J.R. Random]

The article was slashdotted so I couldn't read it and this post is the usual Slashdot speculation. The smallest dinosaurs known were about the size of chicken. So I presume they meant this beast is the smallest known sauropod http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sauropod. Most sauropods were humungous, so a one ton adult would be very small.