Dinosaur the size of a Labrador discovered in US after misclassification

25 Jun 2025 • 6:09 PM MYT
The Independent
The Independent

The world’s most free-thinking newspaper

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  • A new dog-sized dinosaur species, Enigmacursor, has been identified after its fossils were initially miscategorised.
  • Believed to have lived approximately 150 million years ago, Enigmacursor was a herbivore roughly the size of a Labrador with long legs for escaping predators.
  • The fossils, discovered between 2021 and 2022 in the western United States, were bought by the Natural History Museum from a commercial dealer.
  • Palaeontologists realised the near-complete skeleton was not a Nanosaurus, as originally labelled, leading to its reclassification as a distinct species, Enigmacursor, meaning "mysterious runner."
  • This discovery offers hope for correctly identifying hundreds of other small dinosaur bones previously misclassified and highlights the need to re-evaluate historical assumptions in palaeontology.

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