New "Buck-Toothed Evil Spirit" Dinosaur Found

A newly discovered dinosaur species bridges the gap between the earliest known group of predators and more advanced beasts such as Tyrannosaurus rex, according to a new study.

Found at New Mexico's Ghost Ranch fossil site, the primitive dinosaur lived about 205 million years ago. (Related pictures: "'Nasty' Little Predator From Dinosaur Dawn Found.")

The dinosaur, which stood as tall as a large dog, boasts a very unusual skull, said study co-author Hans-Dieter Sues, a vertebrate paleontologist at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

"It has a deep, short snout and these monstrous front teeth. That's a kind of skull structure for a predatory dinosaur that's really unexpected for this early point in time," Sues said.

These features helped earn the new dinosaur the name Daemonosaurus chauliodus, or "buck-toothed evil spirit" in Greek.