Compsognathus

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Compsognathus
Compsognathus skeleton reconstruction in the North American Museum of Ancient Life

Compsognathus skeleton reconstruction in the North American Museum of Ancient Life

Temporal occurrence
Upper Jurassic (Lower Tithonian )
152.1 to 147.7 million years
Locations
Systematics
Lizard dinosaur (Saurischia)
Theropoda
Coelurosauria
Compsognathidae
Compsognathus
Scientific name
Compsognathus
Wagner , 1859
Art
  • Compsognathus longipes

Compsognathus (" Zierlicher Kiefer", from the Greek  κομψός kompsos 'zierlich' and γνάθος gnathos 'jaw') is a genus of small theropod dinosaurs from the Compsognathidae familythat lived in the Upper Jurassic (early Tithonian ) in Europe. Compsognathus reached the size of a turkey and, like most theropods, was a two-legged carnivore . So far, two well-preserved skeletons have been discovered, one in Germany in the 1850sand the second in France over a century later.

Compsognathus is one of the few dinosaurs whose diet is known from fossil finds - the remains of small, agile lizards were found in the bellies of both individuals. The specimen found in Germany is the first fully preserved fossil of a dinosaur to be discovered, although it was initially attributed to a lizard. The only known species ( type species ) is Compsognathus longipes , although the specimen discovered in France was previously listed as a separate species, Compsognathus corallestris .

Until the 1980s and 1990s, Compsognathus was considered the smallest known dinosaur and the closest relative of the ancient bird Archeopteryx . That is why Compsognathus has also become known outside the scientific community.

features

Compsognathus was about 1 meter long

Compsognathus is known from two almost completely preserved skeletons. The skeleton found in Germany belonged to an animal about 89 centimeters long, while the skeleton discovered in France suggests an animal about 125 centimeters long. For decades Compsognathus was considered the smallest known dinosaur - later, however, even smaller dinosaurs were discovered, such as Caenagnathasia , Microraptor or Parvicursor . Weight estimates range from 0.26 to 0.58 kilograms for the smaller and from 0.83 to 3.5 kilograms for the larger specimen.

Like other Compsognathids, Compsognathus had short arms, each with three strong fingers and a relatively long but thin skull. The tail is only partially preserved in both fossils. The related Sinosauropteryx had the proportionally longest tail of all theropods known to date with over 60 caudal vertebrae, whereby it is assumed that Compsognathus had a similarly long tail. As with related genera, the skull had five paired skull windows , with the eye socket (orbital window ) being the largest. The lower jaw was thin, with the lack of a mandibular window - an opening in the lower jaw commonly found in archosaurs . The teeth were small but sharp, which made them adapt to prey, which consisted of small vertebrates and perhaps other small animals such as insects. In contrast to the rest of the teeth, the foremost teeth in the intermaxillary bone (premaxilla) were not sawn. Differences to Sinosauropteryx show in a shorter skull, longer neck ribs and relatively longer arms, which reached 40% of the leg length.

History of discovery and finds

Cast of the first fossil discovered in Bavaria in the late 1850s in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History .

The German find ( holotype , specimen number BSP AS I 563) from the Solnhofen limestone in the Riedenburg - Kelheim region in Bavaria was acquired by the physicist and fossil collector Joseph Oberndorfer in 1859. The exact location was apparently kept secret by Oberndorfer and is still unknown today. The find is dated to the late Kimmeridgian or the early Tithonian . Johann Andreas Wagner studied the fossil and published a brief description in 1859; a more extensive description followed in 1861. Wagner coined the name Compsognathus longipes ("long-legged dainty jaw"), but considered the find to be a kind of lizard. John Ostrom published an extensive description in 1978 which made Compsognathus one of the best known small theropods of the time. The specimen was considered an important icon of the so-called opisthotonus hypothesis. However, the hunched posture is not due to agony , but to decomposition processes after death. The fossil discovered in Germany is exhibited today in the Bavarian State Collection for Paleontology and Historical Geology in Munich .

Compsognathus fossil from Canjuers , France

The larger French skeleton (copy number MNHN CNJ 79) was probably discovered in 1971 and comes from the limestone at Canjuers near Nice in southeastern France. The find is dated to the lower tithonium and consists of two rock blocks - on the first block there is the skull and postcranium (residual skeleton) up to the seventh caudal vertebra, on the second the caudal vertebrae 9 to 31 have been preserved. Only the rear ( distal ) end of the tail and some hand bones are missing . Initially, the fossil was privately owned by the Ghirardi family, the owners of the limestone quarries in Canjuers. In 1983 the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris was able to buy up the family's collection, including the French Compsognathus specimen. This fossil was first described in 1972 by Alain Bidar and colleagues; After it was bought by the Paris Museum, the fossil was prepared and examined in more detail by JG Michard. The most recent study of the fossil is by Karin Peyer (2006).

In 1884 Dames described four foot bones from the Solnhofen limestone, which von Huene (1925) believed to be another Compsognathus find. Ostrom (1978) refuted this assignment, as these bones have different proportions than the corresponding bones of Compsognathus . Zinke (1998) described 49 teeth from the Guimarota Formation of Portugal ( Kimmeridgium ) as another Compsognathus find.

Systematics

External system

Historical reconstruction of Compsognathus longipes from OC Marsh

As early as 1868, Thomas Huxley suspected that this animal was closely related to the dinosaurs. Huxley created a new order, the Ornithoscelida, which should contain the suborder Dinosauria and the new suborder Compsognatha. Compsognathus was the only representative of the Compsognatha. In 1896, Othniel Charles Marsh recognized this genus as a true member of the dinosaurs, classified the Compsognatha as a subordination of the Theropoda and established a new family, the Compsognathidae . Friedrich von Huene (1914) rejected the name Compsognatha and classified the Compsognathidae within the Coelurosauria - this classification is still considered valid today.

For a long time Compsognathus was the only representative of the Compsognathidae; however, in the past few decades paleontologists have discovered several related genera. Today the Compsognathidae are assigned the genera Aristosuchus , Huaxiagnathus , Mirischia , Sinosauropteryx , and sometimes Juravenator and Scipionyx . Although Mononykus was previously also considered a member of this family, Chen and colleagues (1998) refuted this assignment - these authors see the similarities between Mononykus and the Compsognathids as an example of convergent evolution . The position of Compsognathus and its relatives within the Coelurosauria is controversial. Some researchers, such as Thomas Holtz, Ralph Molnar and Philip Currie (2004) consider the Compsognathidae to be the most original Coelurosauria family, while others postulate a classification within the Maniraptora .

Internal system

With Compsognathus longipes only one species of this genus is currently recognized. Bidar (1972) originally described the larger French specimen as a second species, Compsognathus corralestris . This should differ from Compsognathus longipes by its size and by a supposed fin-like, probably webbed hand . However, Ostrom (1978) showed that the French specimen is almost identical to the German specimen except for size. Callison and Quimby (1984) identified the smaller specimen discovered in Germany as a cub of the same species.

Paleoecology

The quarry where the French Compsognathus specimen was discovered

During the Upper Jurassic , Europe was a dry, tropical archipelago on the edge of the Tethys Sea . Both sites - the Solnhofen area and Canjuers - were lagoons at the time of the deposits , which lay between the beaches and coral reefs of the Jurassic islands of the Tethys Sea. Contemporaries of Compsognathus include the early bird or bird-like dinosaur Archeopteryx and wellnhoferia and pterosaurs (Pterosauria) Rhamphorhynchus and pterodactyl with a. The same debris that contained the Compsognathus remains is home to the fossils of numerous marine life such as fish, echinoderms , crustaceans and mollusks , confirming that Compsognathus lived on the coast. Apart from Archeopteryx and Wellnhoferia , no other dinosaur has been discovered associated with Compsognathus .

Paleobiology

hand

Compsognathus was an active and agile predator, as shown by this model in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History .

The specimen discovered in Germany in the 19th century shows only two fingers on each arm, which led scientists to believe that the animal actually only had two fingers. The fossil discovered later in France, however, shows that the hand of Compsognathus - similar to other representatives of the Compsognathidae - was actually equipped with three fingers. The front limbs of the German fossil are, as we know today, only partially preserved. Bidar supposed that the French specimen had during his lifetime webbed had between the fingers. In The Evolution and Ecology of the Dinosaurs , published in 1975, LB Halstead describes Compsognathus corallestris as an amphibious dinosaur that hunted prey in the water and was able to escape larger predators by swimming out on the water. This hypothesis was rejected by later authors.

Diet and locomotion

Nopcsa's illustration from 1903 shows the stomach contents of the individual found in Germany.

Marsh discovered a small skeleton in the abdominal region of the German specimen in 1881 and believed it to be the remains of an embryo . In 1903, however, Franz Nopcsa showed that it was actually the skeleton of a lizard that had eaten the animal. Ostrom attributed it to the genus Bavarisaurus in 1994 and concluded that this lizard was a fast, agile runner: it had a long tail, and its proportionally long legs also indicate rapid locomotion. These conclusions suggest that Compsognathus, as a predator of these animals, must have had good eyesight and the ability to accelerate quickly in order to hunt these lizards. The Bavarisaurus skeleton has been preserved in one piece, which shows that Compsognathus swallowed its prey as a whole without crushing it. Fossils of undetermined lizards or sphenodonts have been found in the belly of the French specimen .

In 1922, using a series of tracks known as Kouphichnium lithographicum, Othenio Abel suggested that some small dinosaurs like Compsognathus had jumped around. The palaeontologist Martin Wilfarth also imagined the cause of the trace as a small dinosaur - he is convinced that the animal had spread its arms forward to move around and swing its hind legs forward through it. Only in 1940 proved Kenneth E. Caster , that it is in the Kouphichnium traces the tracks of a horseshoe crab of the genus Limulus is a recent study has a top speed of Compsognathus based on muscle models to 64 h km / estimated.

Possible egg finds and integument

On the stone slab of the German Compsognathus specimen, there are 13 hemispheres below the chest, each with a diameter of ± 10 mm. Although they are usually ascribed to the Saccocoma sea ​​lily , which is common in Solnhofen limestone , Matthias Mäuser interpreted them as unlaid eggs in 1983. However, later authors questioned this hypothesis because the fossils were found outside the body. Nopcsa (1903), Barthel (1964) and Reisdorf & Wuttke (2012) attributed the genesis of the structures in question to gaseous putrefaction products that formed during the decomposition of the carcass on the sea floor. Further doubts arose after the discovery of a Sinosauropteryx skeleton , which contains two fossil eggs in the abdominal region. These eggs are proportionally larger and also less numerous than the putative Compsognathus eggs.

In 1901 Friedrich von Huene described skin impressions in the abdominal region on the German specimen as well as a skin armor made of hexagonal horn plates, which is said to have covered at least the tail and neck of the animal. Structures on the arms of the French specimen were viewed as the thick skin of webbed feet (see above). In his new description of Compsognathus , Ostrom (1978) was able to refute all these interpretations. Reisdorf & Wuttke (2012) have recently interpreted the structures developed on the German Compsognathus specimen as adipocire - pseudomorphosis .

Feathers and the connection with birds

For a whole century Compsognathus was the only well-known small theropod - this also led to comparisons with Archeopteryx and to speculation about a relationship with birds. Indeed, Compsognathus , rather than Archeopteryx , aroused Huxley's interest in the origins of birds. Compsognathus and Archeopteryx have many similarities in shape, size and proportions - so many that at least one featherless skeleton of an Archeopteryx was mistaken for that of a Compsognathus for many years . Many other theropods such as Deinonychus , Oviraptor or Segnosaurus are now considered to be even closer relatives of the birds.

Reconstruction of the Compsognathus : The systematic position of the Compsognathus is an indication that its body was possibly covered with feather-like structures.

None of the Compsognathus fossils show imprints of feathers or feather-like structures - in contrast to Archeopteryx , which comes from the same sediments; thus many pictures show Compsognathus without feathers. The only feathers known from Archeopteryx are the large tail and flight feathers; short feathers, which probably covered the body, have not been preserved. The genera Sinosauropteryx and Sinocalliopteryx, which are closely related to Compsognathus, have been preserved along with the remains of simple feathers, which probably covered the body like fur, which suggests that Compsognathus could also have been similarly feathered. In contrast, in another presumed Compsognathid from Germany, Juravenator , remnants of a scaly skin were found, but without any signs of possible fletching. This could mean that feathers only appeared in a few Compsognathids, although a 2007 study by Butler and Upchurch concluded that Juravenator was not a Compsognathide at all.

Compsognathus in popular culture

Compsognathus is one of the popular dinosaurs because of its small body size, its supposedly two-fingered hand and the completeness of the type specimen. For a long time it was considered unique due to its small size, as most other small dinosaurs were discovered much later.

In the recent past these dinosaurs appeared in the movies The Lost World: Jurassic Park ( The Lost World: Jurassic Park ), Jurassic Park III and Jurassic World: The Fallen Kingdom ( Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom ) on. In Forgotten World it is incorrectly referred to as " Compsognathus triassicus ", which combines the name Compsognathus with the species names of Procompsognathus . The “compys” in Jurassic Park are depicted as social animals hunting in groups - in fact there is no evidence of such a way of life.

The dinosaur plays a notable role in the children's book series Dino Terra by the author Fabian Lenk .

The "Compys" also appear in the video games Dino Crisis and Dino Crisis 2 . In the second part, they are described as raven-like animals that steal shiny objects; hence they are considered to be the direct ancestors of birds.

Individual evidence

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  2. ^ Gregory S. Paul : Early Avetheropods. In: Gregory S. Paul: Predatory dinosaurs of the world. A complete and illustrated guide. Simon and Schuster, New York NY et al. 1988, ISBN 0-671-61946-2 , pp. 297-300.
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  41. ↑ Shuan Ji, Qiang Ji, Jingfang Lu, Chongxi Yuan: A new giant compsognathid dinosaur with long filamentous integuments from Lower Cretaceous of Northeastern China. In: Acta Geologica Sinica. English edition. Volume 81, No. 1, 2007, ISSN  1000-9515 , pp. 8-15.
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