The small german theropod

[HPB1956@aol.com]

Dear list members, 

there's an interesting report (in German) at 
http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/0,1518,148615,00.html titled 
"Röntgenstrahlen machen Saurier sichtbar" ("X-Rays make dinosaur visible")

It concern's the small juvenile theropod found in Bavaria in 1998, which is 
dated at about 150ma.


According to this report:

The remains of this theropod are embedded in a slab of limestone, which is 
broken into two parts. It's about 50cm long and 3 cm thick.

Preparation of the first piece exposed a skull with oversized teeth.

Conventional X-raying at the Jura-Museum Eichstätt yielded no results. So 
scientists at the Fraunhofer-Institute examined this fossil by using 
3D-computer tomography.

This showed that the slab contains only parts of  the neck vertebrae and the 
skull.

The report also states that this theropod is nicknamed "Borsti" due to 
possesing a putative fur. (The german word "borstig" means bristly).


I think that it´s a shame that only the skull and some neck vertebrae were 
found. But that's life and the vagaries of fossilization.

Cheers


Heinz Peter Bredow