Coelophysis
| Coelophysis Fossil range: Upper Triassic–Lower Jurassic |
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| Profile of Coelophysis bauri. | |||||||||||||||||||
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| Coelophysis bauri Cope, 1889 |
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Coelophysis was a small fast running carnivorous dinosaur. It is one of the earliest known genera of dinosaur. Coelophysis was found in Upper Triassic strata dated to about 215 million years age. It lived in what is now the southwestern United States. Similar dinosaurs are found all over the world at that time.
Coelophysis walked on two legs (as did all theropods). It was no more than about three feet (1 meter) tall at the hips but because of a long tail could be almost 10 feet (3 meters) long. There is some evidence that these animals hunted in packs, from the large numbers found together at the Ghost Ranch fossil site in New Mexico.
Two different sizes of this species have been found in the fossil record. At first paleontologists (scientists who study the fossil remains of dinosaurs) thought that they were two different species, but most now think that this is because Coelophysis males were larger than the females. This trait, known as sexual dimorphism, is often seen today in many species, including humans (although it is much less extreme in humans than in, for example, elephant seals).
For a while, it was thought that Coelophysis were cannibalistic, because what looked like Coelophysis babies were seen in the stomach of an adult Coelophysis. However, Rob Gay in 2002 showed that that these specimens were misinterpreted. Several specimens of "juvenile coelophysids" were actually small crurotarsan reptiles such as Hesperosuchus. In some cases bigger individuals were crushed on top of smaller ones). There is no longer any evidence to support cannibalistic behavior in Coelophysis.[1][2]
In 1998, a Coelophysis skull from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History was taken into space on the Space Shuttle Endeavour. It also spent some time on the space station Mir before being returned to Earth.
Coelophysis is the state fossil of New Mexico.
[change] References
- ↑ Gay, Robert J. 2002. The myth of cannibalism in Coelophysis bauri. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 22(3); 57A
- ↑ Gay, Robert 2010. Evidence related to the cannibalism hypothesis in Coelophysis bauri from Ghost Ranch, New Mexico. In: Notes on early Mesozoic theropods. Lulu Press, 9-18. ISBN 978-0-557-46616-0
