Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
Fossil hunters have unearthed what they believe to be the oldest example of defamation of character amid a collection of bones dating back 210 million years.
The victim of the slur is the earliest well-known dinosaur, the slender biped Coelophysis bauri, which gained notoriety in the 1950s as a cannibal content to feed even on its own young.
The dinosaur’s dietary behaviour emerged when paleontologists working in Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, uncovered an enormous bonebed containing the skeletons of hundreds of Coelophysis. Some appeared to have remnants of their own kind in their stomach regions. But in research published, paleontologists at the American Museum of Natural History in New York claim the Coelophysis has been badly wronged. They re-examined the fossils found in New Mexico and concluded that although Coelophysis was a meat eater, there was no evidence it was a cannibal after all.
The discovery will not only require a more sympathetic update of the dinosaur’s behaviour in textbooks, but it is also causing ripples through the world of museums.
Ian Sample
