Tiny Heads

At 84.2 mm the head of Aquilops is a very small head. That is smaller than a lot of photography lenses. That is just about the size of the body of your average field mouse. Obviously a head can be much smaller than 84.2 mm so it is not the smallest head that has ever been attached to an animal. However, a head the size of a mouse makes for a very tiny dinosaur.The entire dinosaur, as estimated in the Farke description paper, may have been no larger than 60 cm; that is approximately three whole mice, tail and all. That size was not the same as multiple mice though. Supporting an estimated weight of 1.5 kg, Aquilops was the same weight as approximately 33 mice. The common field mouse had little to fear from Aquilops, though, as they mostly shared a dietary ecology as herbivorous, potentially accidental omnivores; mice are known to eat insects so they are not as "accidental" as Aquilops might have been.

©Danny Cicchetti