In a dazzling discovery, fossils brought up from a mine in Wee Warra, near the Australian outback town of Lightning Ridge, belong to the newly named dinosaur species Weewarrasaurus pobeni. The animal, which was about the size of a Labrador retriever, walked on its hind legs and had both a beak and teeth for nibbling vegetation.

A type of dinosaur known as an ornithopod, Weewarrasaurus may have moved in herds or small groups for protection. The fossil adds to growing evidence that the plant-eating fauna of the Southern Hemisphere consisted of quite different creatures than the Cretaceous herbivores of North America, such as the numerous horned relatives of Triceratops and the duck-billed hadrosaurs.

But perhaps the most striking thing about