Everyone loves a new dinosaur. Especially scary little ones that could hide under your bed and chomp off your digits one-by-one. Take that, boogy man!

RTFA: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/03/16/tech…

Model of the Newly Discovered Hesperonychus Elizabethae

It had razor sharp claws and its teeth may have been the terror of Alberta 75 million years ago – among animals smaller than a squirrel, that is.

The kitten-sized predator identified by paleontologists at the University of Calgary and the University of Alberta is the smallest carnivorous dinosaur ever found in North America. The next smallest meat-eating dinosaur ever found on the continent was about the size of a wolf.

“Until we found this animal, basically we had no evidence for any small carnivores being present in North America,” said University of Calgary researcher Nicholas Longrich, in a video released by the university on Monday.

Longrich and the University of Alberta’s Philip Currie have written an article describing the velociraptor-like dinosaur, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

The tiny, bird-like predator ran on two legs and was about half the size of a housecat, weighing less than two kilograms, and standing about as tall as an average wastebasket. It likely hunted near the ground in marshes and forests for insects, small mammals, amphibians and “maybe even baby dinosaurs,” Longrich said.

The researchers have given the dinosaur the scientific name Hesperonychus Elizabethae.

Hesperonychus means “western claw” and Elizabethae is a tribute to the late Elizabeth (Betsy) Nicholls, the well-known Alberta paleontologist and former curator at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller who originally unearthed the bones.