Coelophysis was a small, agile dinosaur that lived during
the Triassic era about 210 million years ago. It was about three metres long
and it would have stood about waist-high to the average human, had any been
around at the time. Being of light build, with hollow bones, it would only have
weighed about 20 kilograms (44 pounds).
It had long, powerful back legs, so it would have been able
to run quickly, and its smaller front legs would have been used like arms. It
had “hands” with three clawed fingers that would have been used to catch and
hold its prey. Its mouth was full of small sharp teeth.
The “arms” feature contrasts sharply with meat-eaters that
appeared much later in the Dinosaur Age, such as Tyrannosaurus, that had
forelimbs with no discernible purpose. More than 140 million years elapsed
between Coelophysis and Tyrannosaurus, which is many millions of years longer
than the gap between Tyrannosaurus and us! There was therefore plenty of time
in which evolution could make substantial changes between dinosaurs similar to
Coelophysis and those resembling Tyrannosaurus.
Coelophysis belonged to the therapod group of meat-eating
dinosaurs. Its food probably consisted mainly of lizards, worms and insects.
A large number of Coelophysis fossils were found at Ghost
Ranch, New Mexico, USA, in 1940. They may have been a herd of animals that
drowned during a sudden flash flood.
© John Welford
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