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Scientific Classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Sauropsida
SuperOrder: Dinosauria
Order: Theropoda
Family: Coeluridae
Genus: Coelurus
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Coelurus - The Breast Footed Dinosaur

About 156 to 145 million years ago there lived a dinosaur called Coelurus. Coelurus or Coelurosauria, the name means hollow tail. It is a poorly known species. Strangely Coelurus has a number of unusual things about them. Formerly it was referred to small as opposed to huge theropods. This is at present recognized as an artificial, polyphyletic alliance group. Now theropods were bipedal and carnivorous dinosaurs. Their name means breast footed in Greek. The monophyletic taxon includes all superior popular cladistic theropods. This also incorporates their descendants like the birds starting with Archaeopteryx. It was a carnivore which lived in the late Jurassic period. The Maniraptoria and Maniraptoriformes are roughly something similar to them as their grasping of hands was quite alike.

Coelurus was a dinosaur of 6 feet (1.8 m) long, weighing roughly around 20 kg and its thigh bone was 55 cm long. Its bones were hollow as its name means. According to researchers, it was light weighted, which made their movement to be light and fast. The fossils of Coelurus were found in Wyoming , USA . In 1879 a famous paleontologist, Othniel C. Marsh named it Coelurus. Coelurus gets its name from the light bones or vertebrae that are among the fragmentary remains which was recovered from the remains.

Coelurus describes a number of diverse groups in the general phylogenetic which are at different periods as its name suggests. So the uncertainty of the dates is the definitions used by paleontologists, researchers and authors. Even some of the earlier material is not conclusively identified properly during excavation.

Coelurus had a short skull and taller than Ornitholestes. It had very long neck, a slender vertebra, especially cervical and caudal parts of the bone structure. They had strong pneumatic long bones with hollow vertebrae and hollow tail with interestingly large central cavity along with thin walls. The cervical that possess shelves are broad and curved with anterior cervical. Another cervical is found co ossified with ribs. Dorsal central are elongated and spool shaped and neural arches laterally compressed. Its neural spines are much reduced and are relatively low neural arches with dorsal ribs having undivided heads. It also had compresses unguals with theropod's pelvis and the thigh bone or femur with major trichinae anterior. It had little flexion at knee based on limited antero-posterior extension of femoral condyles.

Studies reveal that they used to live in the woods. It was perhaps also a bipedal like the theropod dinosaur. Nothing much is clear about this species. So nothing specific could be told about them yet.

In spite of all this Coelurus was an interesting dinosaur said by researchers. It was not huge but as a carnivore it used to feed on flesh. It was lighter than any other dinosaur thus could run faster and could not be touched by its predators easily. As per all researchers Coelurus was a great discovery in itself. It is an interesting dinosaur to be studied on. Its fossils speak a lot about itself and its lineage as well as its descendants.