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By Dean Murray

A newly discovered baby dinosaur is so cute it has been named after a famous cartoon character.

The species honors one of South Korea’s most beloved characters, Dooly the Little Dinosaur.

Officially called Doolysaurus huhmini, it is the first new dinosaur species discovered in Korea in 15 years and the first Korean dinosaur fossil found with portions of its skull.

Researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and the Korean Dinosaur Research Center uncovered the fossil on Korea’s Aphae Island.

Jongyun Jung, a visiting postdoctoral researcher at UT’s Jackson School of Geosciences who led the research, said: “Dooly is one of the very famous, iconic dinosaur characters in Korea. Every generation in Korea knows this character. And our specimen is also a juvenile or ‘baby’, so it’s perfect for our dinosaur species name to honour Dooly.”

The fossil, discovered in 2023 by co-author Hyemin Jo, a researcher at the dinosaur centre, is estimated to be about two years old and was still growing when it died.

A University of Texas statement said: “It’s about the size of a turkey, but an adult Doolysaurus may have grown to twice that size. It also may have been covered in a coat of fuzzy filaments.”

“I think it would have been pretty cute,” said study co-author Julia Clarke, a professor at the Jackson School. “It might have looked a bit like a little lamb.”

The skull bones were revealed when the fossil underwent a scientific micro-CT scan at the University of Texas High-Resolution X-ray Computed Tomography (UTCT) facility.

“When we first found the specimen, we saw some leg bones preserved and some vertebrae,” Jung said. “We didn’t expect skull parts and so many more bones. There was a fair amount of excitement when we saw what was hidden inside the block.”

Research on the dinosaur, whose scientific name is Doolysaurus huhmini, is published in the journal Fossil Record.