Dinosaurs come into view only slowly. Complete, or even near-complete, skeletons are incredibly rare, and our understanding of what a given dinosaur was like in life is based on a shifting bed of new fossil finds and analyses. And while they might not be as likely to make headlines, scrappy dinosaurs are still vitally important to ongoing investigations into the diversity and evolution of the Mesozoic celebrities. The partial remains test ideas and raise new questions about what we thought we already understood. The latest of these fractional dinosaurs, described by Andrew Farke and Joe Sertich this week in PLoS One, is Dahalokely tokana.

In terms of dinosaur superlatives, Dahalokely isn’t in the running for the classic titles of biggest, fiercest,