Juravenator, Latin for “Jurassic hunter”, is one of the truly rare dinosaur findings from the limestones. Its skeleton is complete down to the tips of its claws. The fossil is even more completely preserved than you see here: Ultraviolet light reveals traces of skin, feathers and scales on the tail. This makes this fossil, discovered in 1998, one of the best-preserved dinosaur findings in the world.
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Small but dangerous
Our Juravenator was a young animal, a few months old. The small dinosaur lived on the islands of the Jurassic Sea, where it probably mainly ate insects. Its senses were particularly well developed to catch this fast prey.
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Juravenator was probably over two meters long when fully grown. It then hunted lizards, tuataras and certainly also small dinosaurs. As with many other reptiles, juveniles and adult individuals did not compete with each other for food.
More dinosaur discoveries found in the Bavarian Platy Limestones
Dinosaurs are extremely rare in the Bavarian limestones. With the exception of Archaeopteryx, only one specimen of each genus is known to date. This may be due to the fact that they were land animals and were therefore only embedded in marine sediments in exceptional cases.
