Discoveries

Paleontologists discover 140-million-year-old dinosaur tooth from mysterious 'new species'

Malaysian and Japaense researchers announced Thursday that they had unearthed a 140-million-year-old dinosaur tooth, which may belong to a new species of "bird-hipped" herbivorous dinosaurs.

The researchers found the half-inch-long tooth in a sedimentary rock formation in the Malaysian state of Pahang. The tooth's exact location has not been revealed, but it is near where the first Malaysian dinosaur fossil was found in 2012.

Masatoshi Sone of the University of Malaya, the lead researcher on the project, said the discovery proves there may be more dinosaur fossils still hidden in Malaysia.

Sone believes the mystery dinosaur was roughly the size of a horse. The fossil dates to the Cretaceous period, which took place 145 to 75 million years ago at the end of the Mesozoic era.