Ornitholestes
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 life restoration of Ornitholestes
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Extinct (fossil)
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| Ornitholestes hermanii Osborn, 1903 |
Ornitholestes ("bird robber") was a small theropod dinosaur of the late Jurassic of Western Laurasia (the area that was to become North America). Almost everything known of this species comes from a single skeleton of Ornitholestes, found near Como Bluff in 1900, and described by Henry Fairfield Osborn in 1903. A hand was later attributed to Ornitholestes, although this attribution is now in doubt.
Ornitholestes was a coelurosaur, similar in many ways to Compsognathus, though somewhat larger. It had small, sharp teeth and probably preyed on small animals such as lizards and mammals. Ornitholestes is sometimes illustrated with a crest on the snout (similar to that of Proceratosaurus); however this has recently been disproved by Carpenter et al, which indicated that the 'crest' was actually a broken nasal bone.
It appeared in the second episode of Walking with Dinosaurs as a main enemy of Diplodocus babies.
[edit] References
- Osborn, H. F. (1903). "Ornitholestes hermanii, a new compsognathoid dinosaur from the upper Jurassic". Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 19: 459-464.
- Carpenter, Miles, Ostrom and Cloward (2005). ""Redescription of the small maniraptoran theropods Ornitholestes and Coelurus from the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation of Wyoming."". Carpenter (ed.). The Carnivorous Dinosaurs. Indiana University Press.: 49-71..
