Procompsognathus
Fossil of Procompsognathus triassicus in the State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart.
- Württemberg, Germany
- Procompsognathus triassicus
Procompsognathus was a small, indigenous to northern Europe carnivorous dinosaur. The only way so far described P. triassicus can be dated to the Late Triassic (middle Norian ). The five -fingered dinosaur probably mainly fed by smaller lizards and insects.
Features
Procompsognathus was about 1.20 meters long and ran on its hind legs ( bipedalism ). According to this pace his hind legs were long, the front legs, however, equipped with short and long hands and claws, which allowed grasping prey. The head had a long and narrow snout, which was equipped with many small teeth. The tail was long and stiff. Procompsognathus lived in dry areas and probably hunted mainly insects, lizards and other prey.
System
The only surviving fossil of Procompsognathus triassicus is in a very bad state of preservation, thus it is difficult to make precise features and thus a taxonomic classification. As a rule, Procompsognathus is classified as a theropod, but there are also scientists who put him outside of the dinosaurs in the Ornithodira.
John Ostrom examined the Fund in 1981 new, placed it as a dinosaur, but contradicted a relationship with Compsognathus, as they still Fraas accepted. Rupert Wild and Paul Sereno kept the discovery of the holotype for a chimera, where you mapped the skull the related with the crocodiles Saltoposuchus and only the rear part of a Coelophysidae. The classification of the skull contradicted 1993 Sankar Chatterjee.
After Rauhut and Hungerbuhler (2000), the eddy possess a variety of characteristics that suggest a classification in the Coelophysidae or Ceratosauridae and Carrano et al. (2005) are used in their study of the closely related Segisaurus to the conclusion that both species belong to the Coelophysidae.
Is also disputed the classification of two other finds from the same quarry, a skull ( twice as large as in the holotype ) of 1908 and a left hand from 1909. They were earlier ( Friedrich von Huene 1921) also Procompsognathus were attributed. According to John Ostrom (1982 ) but does not belong to the same taxon as the holotype.
Was named by Eberhard Fraas the Procompsognathus in 1913, which was believed that it is an ancestor of the dinosaur Compsognathus in this. The holotype specimen was found in 1909 in the quarry Burrer on Stromberg at Oberpfaffenhofen. It is divided into three blocks of rock, the skull of 6-7 cm length is severely deformed.