Saurornitholestes

Graphical live reconstruction of Saurornitholestes

• North America

• Saurornitholestes langstoni Sues, 1978
• Saurornitholestes robustus Sullivan, 2006

Saurornitholestes ( " lizard - bird robber " ) is a genus of small theropod dinosaur from the Upper Cretaceous of North America.

Some incomplete skeletons and many individual bones and teeth were found in Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta, Canada and are on display at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology. According to the number of finds close he seems to have been the most common Dromaeosauridae. The fossils are dated to the late Campanian and are thus about 76 to 72 million years old.

Features

As with other theropod from the family of Dromaeosauridae in Saurornitholestes the second toe of the foot was designed as a large sickle claw. Saurornitholestes had a long neck, was about as large as a coyote and probably closely related to Velociraptor.

A tooth of Saurornitholestes was found in a wing bone of the giant pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus. It is not known whether he really killed the much larger animal or carrion eating from a carcass.