It's "Jurassic Park" meets the "The Borrowers:" A fossil found in Madagascar is of a 237-million-year-old dinosaur that was 4 inches tall.
Four inches tall! That's shorter than Tom Cruise! Hiyo!
The dinosaur is known as Kongonaphon kely (K. kely), which means “tiny bug slayer." (Coincidentally, that was the title of the song on the flip side of "Tiny Dancer" by Elton John in 1972.)
By dinosaur standards – or really any standards – K. kely was tiny. It was so small that when it rained, the K. kely was the last to know. That's tiny! Hiyo!
(I'm preparing for my standup comedy routine when the pandemic ends.)
The discover of the little dinosaur grabbed headlines because it was different than the stereotype of a dinosaur.
The articles I read about it used a classic journalism trick, comparing the size of K. kely to something familiar. Instead of "a ship that's the size of four football fields" or "hail the size of golf balls," K. kely was described in one article as "the size of a mobile phone" and in another as "the size of a coffee cup."
Both descriptions work for me, since they're the first two things I grab every morning.
The K. kely skeleton was found in 1998. Actually, that's not true: The bones were dug up in 1998, but there were so many bones mixed together, it took a while to realize this was a dinosaur.
That makes sense because K. kely was so tiny, it would use a toothpick as a pool cue in the dinosaur billiards tournaments. That's tiny! Hiyo!
Finding tiny versions of big things are fascinating. Discovering a mobile-phone-sized dinosaur is like finding out that there are microscopic 747 airliners or miniature giraffes. Or that there's a 3-foot-5 Shaquille O'Neal clone.
Impossible, right?
Scientists needed to find out how K. kely survived. Well, K. kely ate insects, so it wasn't a competitor with its larger cousins. Scientists knew this by looking at its teeth, which is a level of dedication beyond me.
Scientists think it's possible the K. kely adapted its small frame as an evolutionary advantage, allowing the mini dinosaur to go to places other dinosaurs couldn't. That could mean K. kely helped advance other traits that were important to dinosaurs, such as bipedal movement, fluff to warm their bodies, the beginning of flight and how to chase people in "Jurassic Park" movies.
For a little dinosaur, K. kely had a big impact. And it was small. In fact, it was so small that its driver's license photo showed it head to foot! That's tiny! Hiyo!
The good news from this discovery is twofold: First, we're still learning from the past. The fact that we can still be surprised by science (and history. And math. And anything.) means we're still learning and advancing as people.
The other good news is further proof that you can make an impact regardless of size. K. kely was small – in fact, it was so small that other dinosaurs would ask him how the weather was down there (hiyo!) – but still played an important role. More than 2 million years later, we're talking about K. kely.
That's good news.
The bad news?
In 237 million years, we've gone from K. kely to R. Kelly. That's not an advance, right?
The fun-sized dinosaur was much better.
Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.
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