The Dinohunters

A History of Dinosaur Hunting and Reconstruction

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Compsognathus

In 1861 the first reasonably complete dinosaur skeleton was found.   It belonged to a juvenile bird-like creature, found in limestone in Solnhofn, Bavaria, described and named by Andreas Wagner

In 1881 Othniel Marsh noticed that there existed a small reptile skeleton  within the Compsognathus skeleton.  He concluded that it was possibly a foetus, or alternatively that Compsognathus had swallowed one of its own young.    In 1903 Barin Nopcsa dismissed it as an embryo and concluded that it was a small lizard - the dinosaurs last meal.

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This discovery, together with the discovery of Archaeopteryx, would lead to the T. H. Huxley school of thought that birds and dinosaurs were closely related.