Baby dinosaur fossils found in China

Scientists have discovered the fossilized skeleton of a baby dinosaur representing a new species of coelurosaur, a group of theropods that includes ancient beasts like T. rex.

With a skull that's barely taller than the diameter of a quarter, the remains are thought to have belonged to a dinosaur that was less than a year old when it died, and researchers think it measured just 1-meter-long and weighed only 1.3 kilograms.

But the baby may have grown into a bruiser in adulthood, possibly comparable to the 5-meter-long Monolophosaurus, a theropod dinosaur with a long bony crest on its head, or the 7.6-meter-long Sinraptor, which means "Chinese plunderer." What's more, it was likely a meat-eater that stalked lizards and relatives of today's mammals and crocodilians, researchers say.

Named Aorun Zhaoi after a character in the Chinese epic tale "Journey to the West," this dinosaur lived more than 161 million years ago, when the Late Jurassic Period was just getting underway, according to scientists at George Washington University who made the discovery in northwestern China.

Aorun is the fourth coelurosaur found in Shishugou Formation in a remote part of Xinjiang, which has yielded a remarkable diversity of theropods, a group of mostly carnivorous dinosaurs that walked on two legs.