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A Birdlike Carnivore

The first clues were toe bones that had fallen down a gully, paleontologist Peter Makovicky told TFK. The scientists followed the clues like a trail of bread crumbs to a few larger bones sticking out of a cliff. It took 10 days to chisel out an 800-pound slab of rock, which they took back to the lab. The prize inside was a newfound dinosaur, a rooster-size meat-eater named Buitreraptor gonzalezorum, that scientists introduced last week.

The 90-million-year-old buitreraptor was found in Argentina at the southern tip of South America. It is a member of a group of dinosaurs, called dromeosaurs, that were close relatives to ancient birds. The new find proves that dromeosaurs also lived in the Southern Hemisphere. Other examples had been found in the United States, and a feathered one was discovered in China.

But buitreraptor is different, says Makovicky of the Field Museum, in Chicago, Illinois. Its long, slender snout and tiny teeth set it apart from all of the other known dromeosaurs. These were tools that helped it catch dinner, which was probably snakes, lizards and rat-size mammals. "It is one of those special fossils that tells a bigger story about the earth's history," he said. It has certainly given scientists plenty to talk about.

Next: A Noteworthy Find