page_title: Coelophysis
section_title: Conditions of find
hierarchical_section_title: Coelophysis / Lifestyle / Conditions of find
caption_attribution_description: English: A photograph of Coelophysis bauri taken at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in 2007.
context_page_description: Coelophysis was a small fast running carnivorous dinosaur. It is one of the earliest known genera of dinosaur. Coelophysis was found in Upper Triassic strata dated to about 200 million years ago. It lived in what is now the southwestern United States. Similar dinosaurs are found all over the world at that time.
  Coelophysis walked on two legs. It was no more than about three feet tall at the hips but because of a long tail could be almost 10 feet long. There is some evidence that these animals hunted in packs, from the large numbers found together at the Ghost Ranch fossil site in New Mexico.
context_section_description: For a while, it was thought that Coelophysis were cannibalistic, because what looked like Coelophysis babies were seen in the stomach of an adult Coelophysis. However, these specimens were misinterpreted. Several specimens of "juvenile coelophysids" were actually small crurotarsan reptiles such as Hesperosuchus. In some cases bigger individuals were crushed on top of smaller ones. There is no longer any evidence to support cannibalistic behavior in Coelophysis.
caption: Two C. bauri specimens at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science
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