Coelophysis
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- Key People:
- Edwin H. Colbert
Coelophysis, (genus Coelophysis), small carnivorous dinosaurs found as fossils from the Late Triassic Period (228 million to 200 million years ago) of North America.
Coelophysis was a primitive theropod dinosaur. Usually growing to length of about 2 metres (6.6 feet), it was very light, weighing only about 18–23 kg (40–50 pounds), and had a long, slender neck, tail, and hind legs. The head was long and narrow, and the jaws were equipped with many sharp teeth.
Coelophysis, like other predatory dinosaurs, was an agile, lightly built predator that possibly fed on other small reptiles and early relatives of mammals. It is representative of the basal stock from which later, more derived theropod dinosaurs evolved. Coelophysis is known from a massive death assemblage of hundreds of skeletons found at Ghost Ranch, near Abuquiu, New Mexico, and first excavated in 1947.
