Hesperornithoides

Hesperornithoides was nicknamed 'Lori' before it was officially named in 2019.1

Its skeleton was discovered by accident in 2001 while a field crew was digging up a much larger dinosaur called Supersaurus.1

The fossil was found in a muddy sandstone layer that was once a wetland or lake environment.1

Hesperornithoides lived during the Late Jurassic, about 154 to 143 million years ago, in what is now Wyoming.4

This dinosaur had keratin sheaths on its claws, which are rarely preserved in fossils.1

Hesperornithoides was a troodontid, a group of dinosaurs closely related to birds, and its discovery helped show that bird-like dinosaurs lived much earlier than some scientists thought.1