From Veropedia, based on Wikipedia
Categories: Dinosaurs
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. The species name honours 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. The animated film Fantasia included, in the Rite of Spring segment, what appears to be an Ornitholestes leaping at an Archaeopteryx. An Ornitholestes appeared in the second episode of Walking with Dinosaurs as a main enemy of Diplodocus youngsters.[edit] Popular culture
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