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Description

It was just a hatchling when it died, about 113 million years ago in Early Cretaceous, on a beach along the coast of the Tethys ocean in what is today Southern Italy.

Just a few days old, and yet "Ciro", as the tiny fossil was nicknamed after its discovery, stands out as the only known specimen of its kind.

And despite its small size, its marvelously preserved little body reveals us precious details about its internal anatomy and even its diet.

"Ciro" was found in 1981 in the surroundings of the city of Benevento, not far from Naples, Southern Italy, by an amateur paleontologist who kept it in his house for 12 years before showing it to a professional who recognized it as a dinosaur.

Italian paleontologists Dal Sasso, Signore and Maganuco identified it as a new species of coelurosaurian theropod and assigned it the name Scipionyx samniticus.

The specimen consists of a fully articulated skeleton of what appears to be a very young individual, perhaps just a few days old.

The total lengh of the fossil is 23 cm, but its full size in life could have been almost double due to the long tail which is mostly missing.

The young age is proved by a series of details, mainly on the skull, the most striking of them being the fronto-parietal fontanelle (the gap on the top on the cranium, visible in the skeletal drawing in the picture).

But what is astonishing about Scipionyx holotype is the large amount of preserved soft tissue, which makes it an exceptionally valuable specimen. Not only the articulated bones, but also the trachea, oesophagus, duodenum, stomach and intestine are visible.

Also, traces of blood vessels and articular cartilages are preserved as well of a reddish irony halo which is supposed to have been formed by the decay of the liver.

Traces of various animals (lizard-like reptiles and fish) have been foud inside the little body, indicating it was carnivorous.

The relatively large size of the prey has led to speculate that this hatchling was probably fed by its parents who dismembered large prey to feed it, like many living birds to today. Even some fecal pellets are visible in the rectum.

Despite the excellent state of conservation of internal organs, no traces of skin have been found on this fossils, so we don't know anything about its integument; anyway, we can presume that Scipionyx could have been covered by hair-like proto-feathers, not differently from other known compsognathids.

The naked tip of the tail represented in the picture is speculative and based on Juravenator, a creature we will meet later on.

Before the current scientific name was chosen, other names had been proposed, one of them being Microraptor, which has been later used to describe the well known, four-winged dromaeosaurid from China.

MAIN REFERENCES:

Cristiano Dal Sasso, Simone Maganuco - Scipionyx samniticus - in XIX Riunione annuale SPI - Ente GeoPaleontologico di Pietraroja - May 2019;

Marco Auditore - Skeletal drawing of Scipionyx samniticus - 2011.

Description

It was just a hatchling when it died, about 113 million years ago in Early Cretaceous, on a beach along the coast of the Tethys ocean in what is today Southern Italy.

Just a few days old, and yet "Ciro", as the tiny fossil was nicknamed after its discovery, stands out as the only known specimen of its kind.

And despite its small size, its marvelously preserved little body reveals us precious details about its internal anatomy and even its diet.

"Ciro" was found in 1981 in the surroundings of the city of Benevento, not far from Naples, Southern Italy, by an amateur paleontologist who kept it in his house for 12 years before showing it to a professional who recognized it as a dinosaur.

Italian paleontologists Dal Sasso, Signore and Maganuco identified it as a new species of coelurosaurian theropod and assigned it the name Scipionyx samniticus.

The specimen consists of a fully articulated skeleton of what appears to be a very young individual, perhaps just a few days old.

The total lengh of the fossil is 23 cm, but its full size in life could have been almost double due to the long tail which is mostly missing.

The young age is proved by a series of details, mainly on the skull, the most striking of them being the fronto-parietal fontanelle (the gap on the top on the cranium, visible in the skeletal drawing in the picture).

But what is astonishing about Scipionyx holotype is the large amount of preserved soft tissue, which makes it an exceptionally valuable specimen. Not only the articulated bones, but also the trachea, oesophagus, duodenum, stomach and intestine are visible.

Also, traces of blood vessels and articular cartilages are preserved as well of a reddish irony halo which is supposed to have been formed by the decay of the liver.

Traces of various animals (lizard-like reptiles and fish) have been foud inside the little body, indicating it was carnivorous.

The relatively large size of the prey has led to speculate that this hatchling was probably fed by its parents who dismembered large prey to feed it, like many living birds to today. Even some fecal pellets are visible in the rectum.

Despite the excellent state of conservation of internal organs, no traces of skin have been found on this fossils, so we don't know anything about its integument; anyway, we can presume that Scipionyx could have been covered by hair-like proto-feathers, not differently from other known compsognathids.

The naked tip of the tail represented in the picture is speculative and based on Juravenator, a creature we will meet later on.

Before the current scientific name was chosen, other names had been proposed, one of them being Microraptor, which has been later used to describe the well known, four-winged dromaeosaurid from China.

MAIN REFERENCES:

Cristiano Dal Sasso, Simone Maganuco - Scipionyx samniticus - in XIX Riunione annuale SPI - Ente GeoPaleontologico di Pietraroja - May 2019;

Marco Auditore - Skeletal drawing of Scipionyx samniticus - 2011.