A new fossil discovery could be the world's smallest known dinosaur — a feathered, birdlike creature that lived more than 100 million years ago and grew no more than 15.7 inches (40 centimeters) long.The vertebra lacks a neurocentral suture, a rough, open line of bone that doesn't close until a dinosaur is an adult, Naish and his University of A new fossil discovery could be the world's smallest known dinosaur — a feathered, birdlike creature that lived more than Portsmouth colleague Steven Sweetmen reported. That means the dinosaur was grown when it died.

But figuring out the length of the dinosaur from one bone was trickier. The researchers used two techniques to estimate how big the maniraptoran might have been. The first method involved building a digital model of the dinosaur's neck and then fitting that neck into a silhouette of a generic maniraptoran.