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"   (Torsten Blackwood/AFP/Getty Images) In science, it&amp;#039;s exceedingly rare when the naked eye usurps modern technology--powerful telescopes offer humans unprecedented views of celestial phenomena, surgeons can send tiny cameras inside your intestinal tract and even iPhone apps can spot public restrooms before you can. However, for the paleontologists who routinely discover new dinosaurs, a good set of eyes, geological know-how and a little luck remain the best tools. &amp;quot;[Finding dinosaurs] still comes down to people walking around the ground and looking,&amp;quot; says Don Henderson, researcher and Curator of Dinosaurs at Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta, Canada. &amp;quot;A lot of it is accidental.&amp;quot;  In paleontology, most modern techniques--like CT scanning bones to determine a dinosaur&amp;#039;s age at death and GPS mapping to mark a dig site--happen after the fact, when scientists need more detail to work out a puzzle. Using biomechanical models, for instance, researchers can toy with dinosaur movement patterns on computers to figure out how muscles and bones worked together or determine the strength of a dino bite. The year 2009 has been chock full of newly described dinosaur species. They range from big to small, from beaked to sharp-toothed and offer insights about evolutionary patterns, diets and even the range of species yet to be discovered. The large number of finds seems to be a lucky break for paleontologists--but not unrepeatable.  &amp;quot;Paleo is a field where you just look at a map,&amp;quot; says Jack Horner, Curator of Paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies. &amp;quot;To find new species, you have to go to geological units that people haven&amp;#039;t been to. There&amp;#039;s a lot more to be found.&amp;quot;  (Illustration by Julius T. Csotonyi) 1. The World&amp;#039;s Smallest Carnivore Canadian researchers Nick Longrich and Philip Currie discovered the smallest dinosaur ever to be found in North America--a petite meat eater just half the size of a house cat. Unlike massive carnivores, Hesperonychus elizabethae weighed 4.5 pounds and stood roughly 1.5 feet tall. The Canadian team also held the previous record for North America&amp;#039;s smallest dinosaur, but this year&amp;#039;s find inched under last year&amp;#039;s record-breaking insectivore. Researchers guess that hesperonychus, with its two-legged gait and razor-sharp claws, munched on whatever it could take on: insects, small mammals, amphibians and perhaps even baby dinosaurs.  Age: 120 million years  (Illustration by Todd Marshall/National Geographic) 2. Tiny T-rex Veteran dinosaur discoverer Paul Sereno recently uncovered not one but two new species in China, including one that looks a lot like a shrunken T. rex. Named Raptorex kriegsteini, this pint-size predator weighed an estimated 150 pounds but was otherwise the spitting image of the 6-ton tyrannosaur, complete with stumpy arms, muscular legs and giant jaws. The 10-foot-long dinosaur used the same hunting techniques as T. rex and supports the notion that tyrannosaurs had short arms for a large part of their evolutionary history. Raptorex roamed the Earth at least 50 million years before the T. rex, though scientists think there are plenty of medium-size versions in between. In this case, evolution decided bigger was better since the slight raptorex had descendants 90 times its original mass.  Age: 125 million years  (Illustration by James Clark) 3. Bird-Footed Theropod Paleontologists are making history again in the dino-laden fossil beds of northwest China, home of the oldest tyrannosaur and horned dinosaur. A team of American and Chinese paleontologists, including James Clark and Xu Xing, discovered a theropod, or bird-footed dinosaur, that shows how bird hands may have evolved into those of dinosaurs. Scientists now think that birds lost their outer two fingers while evolving into theropods, leaving them with the three inner digits. Limusaurus inextricabilis sported a fully developed beak, a gimpy, reduced first finger and an enlarged second, indicating that limusaurus was in a transition period from bird to dino-like digits.  Age: 159 million years  (Photograph by Mike Hettwer) 4. Parrot Reptile In the sands of the Gobi desert in Mongolia, paleontologist and National Geographic explorer-in-residence Paul Sereno and his team discovered a 3-foot-long nut-cracking dinosaur. Psittacosaurus gobiensis, also known as the &amp;quot;parrot reptile of the Gobi,&amp;quot; resembles a less beaky version of the modern-day macaw and is the first dinosaur suspected to feast on nuts and seeds. But the parrot reptile had more than an unusual diet--this species had a different way of eating than other dinosaurs did. Like a parrot, P. gobiensis had powerful jaw muscles attached to its cheekbone, which helped its bite pack a punch and allowed it to shear tough plants.  Age: 100 million years  Tank-like Ankylosaur (Illustration by Bill Parsons) 5. Tank-like Ankylosaur While roving the hillsides of Montana, Bill and Kris Parsons, a husband-and-wife team of paleontologists, stumbled upon a nearly complete dinosaur skull. It wasn&amp;#039;t just any skull--this was a new species of ankylosaur later named Tatankacephalus cooneyorum, or &amp;quot;buffalo head.&amp;quot; T. cooneyorum provides a snapshot of how the ankylosaur evolved between the early Jurassic and the late Cretaceous periods. This 15- to 20-foot plant eater was built like an Army tank, covered with protective plates and equipped with a clubbed tail. If the ankylosaur felt threatened, it could flatten to the ground, tuck its head in close to its body and use the facial spikes adorning its cheeks and near its eyes to protect the vulnerable parts of its neck.  Age: 112 million years  (Illustration by Jason Brougham) 6. Horned Tyrannosaur American Museum of Natural History paleontologists Michael Novacek and Mark Norell found an eccentric T. rex cousin when on an expedition in Mongolia&amp;#039;s Gobi desert. Alioramus altai, with its slender teeth, long snout and eight 5-inch-long horns, shows that tyrannosaur species varied more than previously thought. These distinctive skull characteristics, never before seen in tyrannosaurs, reveal A. altai to be an entirely novel variety of dinosaur, shocking scientists who thought they knew the T. rex genre well. Researchers used CT scans of the carnivore&amp;#039;s brain followed by bone microstructure analyses to identify the discovery as a 9-year-old dinosaur teenager, about 85 percent of its adult size. Age: 85-95 million years  7. Feathered Herbivore A team of Chinese paleontologists led by Xiao-ting Zhao discovered a species that puts another feather in the cap of bird-dino evolution theory. The new feather-clad find, dubbed Tianyulong confuciusi, was an herbivore with a slight build, signaling that the very first dinosaur had had skin protrusions akin to feathers. This means that all dinosaurs may have evolved from a common ancestor. To find out, scientists need to know whether T. confuciusi&amp;#039;s feathers grew from the skin&amp;#039;s surface or from the tissue below the skin. Unfortunately, the final answers to the feather puzzle don&amp;#039;t lie in fossils. For now, T. confuciusi has ruffled an otherwise blurry picture; feather origins remain a mystery. Age: 120-130 million years  8. Giant Ostrich-Mimic A Chinese-American team of paleontologists, including Mark Norell and Peter Makovicky from the American Museum of Natural History and the Chicago Field Museum, found what appears to be a bizarre mix of ostrich and dinosaur. Their find, Beishanlong grandis, is the biggest species of ornithomimosaur (also known as an ostrich-mimic dinosaur) discovered to date--it had an estimated weight of 1400 pounds. Although this toothless omnivore was enormous, scientists don&amp;#039;t think it was fully developed when it died; growth-line counts on the bone microstructure analysis indicate that it was still rapidly getting bigger. Ostrich-mimics are superficially similar to modern-day ostriches, but that&amp;#039;s where the resemblance ends. Beishanlong had claws up to six inches long and very powerful forearms that indicate digging skills, but these giants didn&amp;#039;t bury their heads in the sand. Age: 65-100 million years "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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