Scientists ID fossils of smallest dinosaur

updated 8:40 p.m. ET Oct. 20, 2009

LOS ANGELES - Scientists say fossil bones housed at a Los Angeles museum belong to the smallest dinosaur discovered in North America.

Luis Chiappe, director of the Dinosaur Institute of the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles, said Tuesday the newly identified creature weighed less than two pounds and stood about 2 feet tall.

It likely ate plants and hunted bugs during the late Jurassic period, about 150 million years ago.

Chiappe and an international team recently identified and named it Fruitadens haagarorum after the Colorado city of Fruita, where it was found three decades ago, and for Paul Haaga, president of the museum board of trustees.

A description of the dinosaur will appear Wednesday in the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

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