Compsognathus was a small,
bipedal,
carnivoroustheropoddinosaur. The animal was the size of a
turkey and lived around 150
million years ago, the early
Tithonianstage of the late
JurassicPeriod, in what is now
Europe. Paleontologists have found two well-preserved fossils, one in
Germany in the 1850s and the second in
France more than a century later. Many presentations still describe Compsognathus as a "chicken-sized" dinosaur because of the small size of the German specimen, which is now believed to be a juvenile form of the larger French specimen. Compsognathus is one of the few dinosaurs for which the diet is known with certainty: the remains of small, agile lizards are preserved in the bellies of both specimens. Although not recognized as such at the time of its discovery, Compsognathus is the first theropod dinosaur known from a reasonably complete fossil skeleton. Until the 1980s and 1990s, it was the smallest known non-avialan dinosaur and the closest supposed relative of the early bird Archaeopteryx. Thus, the genus is one of the few dinosaur genera to be well known outside of paleontological circles. (
more...)
... that French architect Léon Azéma, a prisoner of the Germans during
World War I, designed the
Douaumont ossuary(pictured) to hold the bones of 130,000 unidentified soldiers of both sides?
... that Scottish footballer Dan Friel played more than 300 matches for
Burnley, many of them as
captain?
A
United Nations vehicle patrols the streets of the Bel-Air neighborhood of
Port-au-Prince in the aftermath of the catastrophic 2010 Haiti earthquake. The earthquake occurred at 16:53 local time (21:53
UTC) on Tuesday, 12 January 2010. An estimated three million people were affected by the earthquake, with an estimated 280,000 buildings severely damaged or destroyed.
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