Chilesaurus is the dinosaur discovery of the century | Brian Switek

Chilesaurus doesn’t look like the kind of dinosaur that would kick up much of a fuss. The Jurassic saurian – named for the country, not the tasty peppers – was a small, bipedal herbivore that munched on plants over 150m years ago. It didn’t have nasty teeth, crazy horns, or the immense body size that typically launch the careers of Mesozoic celebrities. The creature’s secret is more subtle, and plays into a controversial reshuffling of the dinosaur family tree.

When Chilesaurus was announced to the public, the dinosaur was characterised as one of the theropods: this is the major dinosaur family that includes famed species such as Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor. But, even though theropods were long characterised as “the carnivorous dinosaurs”, in recent years paleontologists have recognised that this group contained a fair number of species that gave up the meat-eating ways of their ancestors to become omnivores and herbivores, too. Chilesaurus seemed to be one of these evolutionary flips – a herbivorous dinosaur that had evolved from carnivorous ancestors.