Ornitholestes Characteristics

Ornitholestes measured 6.5 feet (2 metres) in length and weighed around 15 kilograms (25 pounds). It was a lightly built, hollow-boned bipedal dinosaur who was a very fast runner. Ornitholestes had a small head and a small bony crest on its snout which may have been used to attract mates. It had many sharp, conical teeth, an 's' shaped, flexible neck and a long tapered stiff tail. The tail would probably have been used to counter-balance when this agile predator was chasing its prey.

Ornitholestes had long legs and was able to change direction very quickly when in pursuit of prey. Its arms were short and strong and it had hands that had 4 clawed fingers, one of which was tiny.

Ornitholestes was very closely related to the evolutionary line that produced the birds. It had wrists that allowed it to tuck its hands up close to its body in the same way a bird holds its wing. The head of Ornitholestes was relatively small. However, the skull was more robust than that of many other small theropods, such as Compsognathus and Coelophysis, and this would have enabled Ornitholestes to deliver a powerful bite.

Ornitholestes was a carnivore and fed up on lizards, small mammals, carrion and eggs. It may have been a scavenger and hunted newly evolved birds.

To date, it is known only from a single partial skeleton and a badly crushed skull found at the Bone Cabin Quarry near Medicine Bow, Wyoming, in 1900.

Ornitholestes fossils have been found in Wyoming and Utah, USA. Ornitholestes was first described and named by the US paleontologist Henry F. Osborn in 1903.

Ornitholestes appeared in the 1999 BBC Walking with Dinosaurs and the 2000 special The Ballad of Big Al.