Page 31 - DINOSOUR ATLAS

u at home on the floodplain
The discovery of hundreds of Coelophysis skeletons at Ghost Ranch
Ghost Ranch is strong evidence that they lived in herds.
The clue is in the fact that the skeletons appear to have
been brought together suddenly at the same time,
not slowly over a long period. How could this have In northern new mexIco there is a famous fossil quarry from where
happened? One explanation is that a herd drowned hundreds of skeletons of Coelophysis have been excavated. This small
in a flash flood; another is that they died while trying dinosaur lived in the Late Triassic, and at around 220 million years
to cross a river. Either way, their bodies were quickly old it is one of the world’s oldest dinosaurs. The bone bed where
buried under sediment.
so many were found is named Ghost Ranch, after a nearby farm.
It lies east of Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park, and both
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sites belong to the Chinle Formation of rocks. These ancient
fossil-bearing rocks began as soft layers of sediment, deposited
#ANJILON 'PSFTU by rivers on their floodplains. Long ago, a herd of Coelophysis sank

into the soft Triassic mud, where they lay buried until excavations
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$BQVMJO 1FBL 'HOST 2ANCH uncovered them in the late 1940s.
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Many of the Ghost Ranch Coelophysis skeletons are
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superbly preserved, revealing the animal to be
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a slender two-legged creature with a slim
body, long neck, and a whiplike tail.
u site location A meat-eater, its body shape and
The Ghost Ranch dinosaur quarry is in the long hind legs suggest that it was
Chama River Valley, near the northern New Mexico designed with speed in mind.
town of Abiquiu. The fossils occur within a thin
bed of red sandstone.

long tail probably
counterbalanced the weight
of its body when it moved around a baby coelophysis skeleton
within the stomach area of an adult
suggests Coelophysis was a cannibal

edwin colbert
long head American paleontologist
with many small, , gojirasaurus Dr. Edwin Colbert
sharp teeth packed
into its jaws This dinosaur is one of (1905–2001) discovered
the biggest Late Triassic carnivores. more than 500 skeletons
It seems to have resembled Coelophysis, of Coelophysis at the Ghost
though twice as big, weighing as Ranch quarry in 1947. His
much as 440 lb (200 kg). Known work on Antarctica also
from a single, incomplete skeleton, helped to confirm the
shoRt aRms
with hands and clawed Gojirasaurus is named after Gojira, theory of plate tectonics,
fingers built for grasping which is the Japanese name for or “continental drift.”
and scratching the movie monster Godzilla.
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