The lightest
Anchiornis was a tiny Theropod dinosaur, the lightest of all dinosaurs and lived in the late Jurassic period (151 - 161 million years ago). Its name means "almost bird". It was one of the smallest dinosaurs with the size of a small chicken. It weighed 110 grams and it reached 34 cm in length, without the tail. Probably, the length of the tail was equal to body length, but a complete tail has never been found.
A very important finding is the nearly complete feather preservation, allowing researchers to identify the structure of the feathers and how they were distributed. These findings show that they developed on the arms, the hind legs and the tail.
In 2010, a team of scientists analyzed, by scanning with an electron microscope, the fossilized melanosomes (pigment cells) of a specimen of Anchiornis, allowing the first almost full-colour depiction of an extinct dinosaur. It turns out that this dino-bird had a reddish-brown crest of feathers on its head, alternating white- and black-striped feathers running along the width of its wings, and black and red "freckles" spotting its beaked face. Legs and fingers were black. Tail colour is unknown due to the lack of preserved tail feathers.
