New dinosaur species with keen sense of smell discovered

Scientists have identified a new species of dinosaur closely related to Velociraptor - made infamous by the movie 'Jurassic Park' - that likely possessed a keen sense of smell which would have made it a formidable predator.
Steven Jasinski, a doctoral student in the School of Arts & Sciences' Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania and acting curator of paleontology and geology at the State Museum of Pennsylvania, discovered the new species while investigating a specimen originally assigned to a previously known species.
The analysis suggests the fossil - part of the dinosaur's skull - actually represents a brand new species, which Jasinski named Saurornitholestes sullivani.

At less than 3 feet at its hip and roughly 6 feet in length, the new dinosaur was not very large.
Previous findings of related species suggest the animal would have been agile and fast, perhaps hunting in packs and using its acute sense of smell to track down prey.
The specimen, roughly 75 million years old, was discovered by paleontologist Robert Sullivan in the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness Area of New Mexico in 1999.

When first described, scientists believed it was a member of Saurornitholestes langstoni, a species of theropod dinosaurs in the Dromaeosauridae family that had been found in present-day Alberta, Canada.

But when Jasinski began a comparative analysis of the specimen to other S langstoni specimens, he found subtle differences.
He observed that the surface of the skull corresponding with the brain's olfactory bulb was unusually large. This finding implies a powerful sense of smell.
"This feature means that Saurornitholestes sullivani had a relatively better sense of smell than other dromaeosaurid dinosaurs, including Velociraptor, Dromaeosaurus, and Bambiraptor," Jasinski said.
"This keen olfaction may have made S sullivani an intimidating predator as well," Jasinski said.
S sullivani comes from the end of the time of dinosaurs, or the Late Cretaceous, and represents the only named dromaeosaur from this period in North America south of Montana, researchers said.

At the time S sullivani lived, North America was split into two continents separated by an inland sea. This dinosaur lived on the western shores in an area called Laramidia.
Though a distinct species, S sullivani appears to be closely related to S langstoni.
Finding the two as distinct species further shows that differences existed between dinosaurs between the northern and southern parts of North America, researchers said.