Ornitholestes
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Ornitholestes Fossil range: Late Jurassic |
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 life restoration of Ornitholestes
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O. hermanni Osborn, 1903 (type) |
Ornitholestes ("bird robber") was a small theropod dinosaur of the late Jurassic of Western Laurasia (the area that was to become North America). To date, it is known only from a single partial skull and skeleton, found near Como Bluff, Wyoming, in 1900, and described by Henry Fairfield Osborn in 1903.[1] A hand was later attributed to Ornitholestes, although it now appears to belong to Tanycolagreus.[2] The species name honors the AMNH preparator Adam Hermann.
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.[2]
[edit] Popular culture
The animated film Fantasia included, in the Rite of Spring segment, what appears to be an Ornitholestes leaping at an Archaeopteryx.
An Ornitholestes with a snout crest appeared in the second episode of Walking with Dinosaurs as a main enemy of Diplodocus youngsters. It also appears in The Ballad of Big Al (a Walking with Dinosaurs special) where it tries to eat newborn Allosaurus.
[edit] References
- ^ Osborn, Henry Fairfield (1903). "Ornitholestes hermanni, a new compsognathoid dinosaur from the Upper Jurassic" (pdf). Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 19 (12): 459–464.
- ^ a b Carpenter, Kenneth; Miles, Clifford; Ostrom, John H.; and Cloward, Karen (2005). "Redescription of the small maniraptoran theropods Ornitholestes and Coelurus from the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation of Wyoming", in Carpenter, Kenneth (ed.): The Carnivorous Dinosaurs. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 49-71. ISBN 0-253-34539-1.
