LiveScience has an article about a newly discovered "dragon". This animal's name, Pendraig milnerae, means "chief dragon", but in reality it was about the size of a chicken. It lived about 215 million years ago during the late Triassic Period in what is now modern day Wales and is one of the oldest known dinosaurs from the UK. The description of this new species appeared in the journal Royal Society Open Science.
"Pendraig milnerae lived near the beginning of the evolution of the meat-eating dinosaurs," study first author Stephan Spiekman, a research fellow at the Natural History Museum who specializes in Triassic reptile evolution, said in a statement. "It's clear from the bones we have that it was a meat-eater, but early in the evolution of this group, these animals were quite small, in contrast to the very famous meat-eating dinosaurs like T. rex, which evolved much later."
Researchers described P. milnerae from an incomplete specimen, as well as two additional fragmentary specimens, discovered at a quarry in Pant-y-ffynnon, a village in southern Wales. The dinosaur's remains indicate that it was about 3 feet (1 meter) long, including its tail, and that it was a theropod — a group of bipedal, mostly meat-eating dinosaurs.
