Ornitholestes was a coelurosaurian closely related to Juravenator, although it lived in North America instead of Europe. Ornitholestes is a very little-known dinosaur; the only specimen is a badly crushed skull and the remains of a partial skeleton. Ornitholestes means ‘bird robber’ in Greek, but the name is inaccurate with what we know today.
Ornitholestes was pictured hunting and killing the ancient bird Archaeopteryx, but Archaeopteryx lived far to the east in Germany, while Ornitholestes lived in Wyoming. We really don’t know much about it at all. In the 1920s and 30s, people thought that Ornitholestes was a species of Coelurus, another related dinosaur.
Because of the crushed remains, we used to have a few misconceptions about our dinosaur. Because the skull looked like it flared up above the nose, old reconstructions showed the animal with a round crest, kind of like Dilophosaurus’, but farther down the head. Ornitholestes is often depicted as a runner with long legs, but its legs were fairly short. It is described as a coelurosaur, although its exact position with the clade is very uncertain. It is possible that it is a primitive maniraptoran, but the most likely theory is that it is a basal coelurosaur closely related to Juravenator.
P.S., I wrote that Juravenator was a compsognathid in a previous post, but research seems to tentatively show that it was actually more primitive than that. However, nothing is certain for now.
Anay Ganesh 