https://www.geek.com/news/scientists-discover-smallest-ever-dinosaur-preserved-in-amber-1820172/?source

Close up of Oculudentavis in Amber (via Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County)

Someone call Guinness: The world’s smallest dinosaur has been found preserved in Burmese amber from Myanmar.

Trapped around 99 million years ago, the delicate skull—tinier even than the smallest living bird—belongs to a new species, Oculudentavis khaungraae, or “eye-tooth-bird.”

Nicknamed “The Cretaceous Terror of Insects,” Oculudentavis refers to the creature’s unusual features: large eyes and loads of teeth, suggesting that despite its size, the bird was a diurnal predator.

“Animals that become very small have to deal with specific problems, like how to fit all sensory organs into a very small head, or how to maintain body heat,” according to lead study author Jingmai O’Connor.

This process, called miniaturization, commonly occurs in isolated environments, most famously islands—like the one this 99-million-year-old Burmese amber is thought to have come from.

Unfortunately, the new specimen consists of only a skull, making it difficult to understand how Oculudentavis is related to other animals. Some features are similar to dinosaurs, while others are more like advanced birds.

“It’s the weirdest fossil I’ve ever been lucky enough to study,” O’Connor, a senior professor with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and research associate at LA’s Natural History Museum (NHM), said in a statement. “I just love how natural selection ends up producing such bizarre forms.

“We are also super lucky this fossil survived to be discovered 99 million years later,” she continued. “Just goes to show the extraordinary circumstances that all need to be just right for fossils to make it into human hands.”

Skull reconstruction of Oculudentavis (via Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County)

Eight specimens of ancient dinosaur birds were previously found in amber, all smaller than traditional fossils preserved in rock.

The petrified tree resin is a unique preservational mode, capturing otherwise unfossilizable parts of ecosystems for discovery centuries later.

“This discovery highlights how ancient amber has the ability to provide information about organisms that are otherwise absent in the fossil record,” Luis Chiappe, senior vice president of research and collections at NHM, explained. “This is particularly the case for tiny animals that lived in trees.”

Tiny animals like Oculudentavis khaungraae, whose full name honors Khaung Ra, who donated the specimen to the Hupoge Amber Museum in China.

A paper describing the hummingbird-sized dinosaur was published this week in the journal Nature.

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