A new dinosaur fossil has been discovered in Chile. Paleontologists said that the newly discovered dinosaur fossils have a very strange collection of characteristics and features owing to which they are calling it the ‘platypus’ dinosaur.

The dinosaur is quite similar to meat-eating dinosaur, but was a strict vegetarian. Diego Suárez, 7, who has discovered the fossils, has named it Chilesaurus diegosuarezi. It has been named after the country it was discovered in.

Diego was with his geologist parents at south of Chilean Patagonia. His parents were conducting studies to know better about the formation history of the Andes mountain range. During this process, Diego came across the fossil bones of the strange dinosaur.

Seeing the odd mix of anatomical features, paleontologists thought that Diego has found different groups of fossil bones of different species. However, later subsequent discovery of more than a dozen Chilesaurus has confirmed that the new dinosaur species was previously unknown to science.

Fossils showed that the dinosaur had a small skull, forelimbs with two fingers and feet that were more akin to primitive long-necked herbivore dinosaurs. Chilesaurus has grown up to 10 feet long.

The researchers said that despite having meat-eating dinosaurs, Chilesaurus preferred a vegetarian diet. The dinosaur used to feed on plants either using its long neck to reach them or it used to its forearms to have vegetables stuff it into bird-like beak.

“Chilesaurus probably fed upon ferns, araucarians, bennetitaleans, and podocarps -- all of which were plants that were abundant at the end of the Jurassic”, affirmed study’s lead author Fernando Novas of the Bernardino Rivadavia Natural Sciences Museum in Buenos Aires.

Chilesaurus and similar vegetarian relatives lived around 145 million years ago and met an evolutionary dead end.