Canadian researchers say they have found the smallest meat-eating dinosaur yet discovered in North America.

This mini-cousin of velociraptor, weighing in at 4-to-5 pounds (2 kilograms) "probably hunted and ate whatever it could for its size -- insects, mammals, amphibians and maybe even baby dinosaurs," according to Nicholas Longrich of the University of Calgary.

The creature lived 75 million years ago in the swamps and forests of southern Alberta, Longrich and colleague Philip J Currie report in today's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.