Herman's Bird Thief

 Ornitholestes hermanni

(Osborn, 1903)
 

    While the great, dry scrubland of Late Jurassic North America is the home to some of the largest animals on Earth, it is also home to the more moderately sized.  Darting about under the feet of the great sauropods like Apatasaurus ajax is two meter long Ornitholestes hermanni, a small, but powerful predator.

  O. hermanni is built on the basic predatory dinosaur scheme, but it shows some distinctive modifications for its particular life style.  O. hermanni is stocky and muscular, with a compressed torso and unusually long arms.   O. hermanni's short, powerfully built skull bristles with thick teeth, not serrated slicers like the teeth of most predatory dinosaurs, but smooth gripping teeth. O. hermanni is not a slash-and-run predator like an allosaur, that inflicts as much damage as it can and then runs, but a grapple predator that will latch onto its until the unfortunate herbivore succumbs to exhaustion and collapses.  Its powerful hind legs can push O. hermanni to great sprints, and its muscular jaws can crush a small dinosaur's spine.  This opportunistic predator will eat almost anything, from fish, mammals and lizards which it snares with its long hand-claws, to dryosaurs and baby sauropods which it overwhelms with its strength.

Thanks to Ray Stanford, of course.

• Jeff Poling's articles
• Dinosaurs and Evolution 3
• Discussion of Deltadromeus and Carcharodontosaurus
• Problems with The Origin and Evolution of Birds, The
• T. Mike Keesey's Ornitholestes page
• Shiraishi Mineo's
• old Ornitholestes
• new Ornitholestes(swimming)
• The BBC's walking with Dinosaurs's Ornitholestes page
• Douglas Henderson's (!) Jurassic forest painting with Ornitholestes
• DinoData's Ornitholestespage
• Jordan Mallon's  Ornitholestes
• Brett Booth's  Ornitholestes
• JR's Ornitholestes hermanni
• Predatory Dinosaurs of the World, a Complete Illustrated Guide, by Gregory S. Paul, published in 1988 bySimon and Schuster
• The Ulitmate Dinosaur Book by David Lambert, published in 1993 by Dorling Kindersley.
• Dinosaurs a Global View by Sylvia J and Stephen A Czerkas, published in 1996 by Barns & Nobel Books Inc.
• Dinosaur Encyclopedia by Don Lessem and Donald F. Glut, published in 1993 by Random House.
• The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs by Dr. David Norman, published in 1985 by Salamander Books.

© Daniel Bensen 2000
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