Coelophysis was made the Official State Fossil of New Mexico by a 1981 act of the New Mexico State Legislature. A famous quarry at the Ghost Ranch Conference Center in northern New Mexico has yielded hundreds of skeletons of this Triassic theropod. The skull pictured here is a that of a juvenile Coelophysis from the NMMNH&S' block from the Ghost Ranch quarry, and will ultimately on display in the museum's Triassic hall.

Coelophysis was a small (up to 10 feet or 3 meters long), lightweight, active bipedal predator that lived in New Mexico approximately 205 million years ago.

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