A Newly Discovered Maniraptoran from Southeast England

A tiny vertebra was unearthed from the ground recently in Southeast England, just adding to the great diversity of prehistoric reptile species during the Mesozoic era.
This vertebra shows obvious characters of being a maniraptoran, such as its large hypapophysis, X-shaped neural arch and amphicoelous centrum.
The authors of this paper believe that the animal that the vertebra belonged to was anywhere from 6.2-15.7 inches in length, this may have been one of the smallest of all dinosaurs.
This theropod has yet to be described.
Abstract - In contrast to the Barremian Wessex Formation on the Isle of Wight, the remains of small theropods are rare in the Berriasian-Valanginian Hastings Group of the English mainland. Both units are part of the dinosaur-rich Wealden Supergroup (Berriasian-Aptian) of southern Britain. Here we report the cervical vertebra of a small dinosaur from the Pevensey Pit at Ashdown Brickworks, a site located north-west of Bexhill, East Sussex. The pit yields a rich assemblage of vertebrate fossils from the Valanginian Wadhurst Clay Formation of the Hastings Group. The new specimen, a near-complete but water-worn posterior cervical vertebra, is tiny (total centrum length = 7.1 mm) but evidently from an adult theropod. Its large hypapophysis, X-shaped neural arch and amphicoelous centrum suggest referral to Maniraptora, and the subparallel anterior and posterior articular surfaces imply that it does not belong to a deinonychosaur. The X-shaped neural arch recalls a similar condition seen in oviraptorosaurs while the high neural canal/articular surface ratio (0.70) is bird-like. The specimen is significant in representing the first maniraptoran to be reported from the Hastings Group but is otherwise indeterminate. By comparing the specimen to better known maniraptorans and estimating the proportions of the animal to which it belongs, we suggest that the total skeletal length of this maniraptoran was somewhere between 16 and 40 cm. It may therefore have been among the smallest of known Mesozoic dinosaurs.

A skeletal restoration of this theropod showing the cervical vertebra that was found (From Naish and Sweetman et al. 2011)

Reference - Darren Naish and Steven C. Sweetman (2011). "A tiny maniraptoran dinosaur in the Lower Cretaceous Hastings Group: Evidence from a new vertebrate-bearing locality in southeast England". Cretaceous Research, 32: 464-471.