The first complete skeleton of a theropod dinosaur discovered in South Korea. Yonhap)

The South Korean National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage announced that a complete skeleton of a small carnivorous dinosaur has been found in southern South Korea.

The fossil has a 5.7-centimeter-long and a 2.6-cm-wide skull and is about 28 cm tall, making it one of the smallest dinosaurs to have ever been discovered in South Korea.

Link to photograph of new fossil is here

More information is here.

A new study study suggests that plumage evolved in dinosaurs because its bright coloration facilitated communication and mate selection.

“If you look at a cladogram (tree of life) for a group of animals for which the relationships are well known and you find a feature that is shared by all of them, it’s pretty safe to assume that this feature was present at the base of the tree and kept throughout the evolution of the last common ancestor into the different species,” Dr. Marie-Claire Koschowitz, of the University’s Steinmann Institute for Geology, Mineralogy and Paleontology told The Huffington Post. “So I looked at the morphology and general color vision in reptilia and birds and lo and behold, it turned out that tetrachromacy is present in every single branch of todays reptiles.”

Link to article here.

I always thought the Spinosaurus looked, well, a little strange on land. New research seems to indicate that the Spinosaurus was a semi-aquatic dinosaur living in fresh water streams and rivers.

Follow this link to read all about it.