Coelophysis facts for kids
Quick facts for kids CoelophysisTemporal range: Upper Triassic – Lower Jurassic, 202–196 mya
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| Mounted skeleton cast at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History | |
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Coelophysidae
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Coelophysis
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| Coelophysis bauri Cope, 1889
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Coelophysis was a small, speedy meat-eating dinosaur. It's one of the very first types of dinosaurs ever found! Coelophysis lived about 200 million years ago during the Upper Triassic period. It roamed the land that is now the southwestern United States. Similar dinosaurs have been found all over the world from that time.
This dinosaur walked on two legs, just like all theropods. It stood about three feet (1 meter) tall at its hips. But with its long tail, it could reach almost 10 feet (3 meters) in length! Many Coelophysis fossils were found together at the Ghost Ranch fossil site in New Mexico. This suggests they might have hunted in groups or packs.
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What Was Coelophysis Like?
Scientists have found two different sizes of Coelophysis fossils. At first, paleontologists thought these were two different species. Now, most believe that the larger ones were males and the smaller ones were females. This is common in many animal species today.
How Did Coelophysis See?
Coelophysis had a long, narrow head, about 10.6 inches (270 mm) long. Its eyes were large and faced forward. This gave it stereoscopic vision, which means it had excellent depth perception. This was very helpful for hunting!
Bony rings, called sclerotic rings, supported its eyes. Scientists compared these rings from a young Coelophysis to those of modern reptiles and birds. They found that Coelophysis was likely a daytime hunter. Its eyesight was even better than most lizards, similar to today's birds of prey.
Was Coelophysis a Cannibal?
For a while, some people thought Coelophysis ate its own kind. This was because what looked like baby Coelophysis bones were found inside adult stomachs. However, scientists later realized these were not baby Coelophysis.
Instead, the bones belonged to small crurotarsan reptiles, like Hesperosuchus. In some cases, larger Coelophysis fossils were simply crushed on top of smaller ones. So, there is no longer any proof that Coelophysis was cannibalistic.
The Discovery of Coelophysis
Edward Drinker Cope first named Coelophysis in 1889. This happened during a time called the "Bone Wars". This was a big rivalry between Cope and another paleontologist, Othniel Charles Marsh. An amateur fossil collector named David Baldwin found the first remains in 1881. The main species, C. bauri, was named after him. These first fossils were not very complete, so scientists didn't get a full picture of the dinosaur.
The Ghost Ranch Discovery
In 1947, a huge "graveyard" of Coelophysis fossils was found in New Mexico. This was at Ghost Ranch, near where the first fossils were found. So many fossils together were probably caused by a flash flood. The flood likely swept away many Coelophysis at once and buried them quickly. It seems these kinds of floods were common back then. For example, the Petrified Forest in nearby Arizona was formed by a huge log jam from a flood.
The Ghost Ranch discovery gave scientists many well-preserved Coelophysis skeletons. Since then, more skeletons have been found in Arizona and New Mexico. There's even an unconfirmed find from Utah. These finds include both adult and young Coelophysis. The rock layers where Coelophysis was found are from the late Triassic period. However, similar dinosaurs have been found in Lower Jurassic rocks in other parts of the world.
Coelophysis is very important to New Mexico. It is the state fossil of New Mexico!
Images for kids
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The famed Coelophysis quarry of Ghost Ranch, as it appears in 2019.
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Size of C. bauri compared to a human
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C. bauri profile
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Cast of the neotype specimen AMNH FR 7224, Redpath Museum
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Bones in a skeleton of C. bauri at the American Museum of Natural History, now interpreted as those of a crocodylomorph
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Two C. bauri casts mounted at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science
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Specimen block, New Mexico Museum
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The Cleveland Museum of Natural History's Coelophysis block, originally American Museum of Natural History block XII collected by Colbert in 1948.
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Grallator from Middletown, Connecticut
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Restoration showing hypothetical wattle and feathers.
See also
In Spanish: Coelophysis para niños
