A BABY dinosaur, one of the most important finds this century, is to be unveiled today by palaeontologists.
The hatchling fossil, dating from 113 million years ago, provides an astonishing range of insights into dinosaur biology, according to Dr Cristiano Dal Sasso, of Milan's museum of natural history, and Dr Marco Signore, of the University of Napoli and Bristol University.
It is the first dinosaur found in Italy and the only one in the world to show its internal organs. Though its exact family origins are unknown, it is a distant relative of Velociraptor.
Dr Dal Sasso and Dr Signore have called the dinosaur Scipionyx samniticus.
The name derives from the Latin Scipio and the Greek onyx, and is dedicated to Scipione Breislak, the geologist who first described the fossils from the region in 1798, and a Roman soldier, Publius Cornelius Scipio.
Samniticus means "from the Sannio": Sannio is the Latin name of the region of Benevento province and Pietraroia village where it was first found in 1993.
The 50cm fossil is one of the smallest found and proves that the Italian peninsula was not submerged during the dinosaur period.
Dr Dal Sasso says that the most striking feature of the specimen, which would have probably grown to 1.5 metres, is the soft fossilised tissue. "Almost the whole gut is perfectly preserved, to such a detail that the loops of the digestive tract and the folds of the gut's wall are recognisable," he says. "This is the first time we can see the intestine in a dinosaur. It is a new field."
Parts of the trachea are also preserved, the team reports in the journal Nature.
Study of these tissues will provide an unprecedented glimpse of dinosaur biology and spark off again the debate about these reptiles and the origin of birds.
"It is still not clear if the dinosaurs were 'hot-blooded' animals, as are mammals and birds, or 'cold-blooded' ones, like the reptiles," says Dr Dal Sasso.
While the hatchling shows no evidence of feathers, it does have an intestine and skeleton reminiscent of birds, he says.
