The tiny, two-toed fossil footprints made by an unidentified dinosaur species some 100 million years ago and preserved in a slab of rock in South Korea are thought to have been made by a raptor no bigger than a modern sparrow. What stumped paleontologists was the animal’s enormous stride; the unknown raptor’s footprints had larger gaps between them than expected for such a diminutive dinosaur.
“This guy is dinky—one of the smallest dinosaurs that we have fossils of,” said University of Maryland paleontologist and Science and Global Change program director Thomas R. Holtz Jr.