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Book Fauna Palaestina 4 Year 2014 By Prof Dr Norman Ali Bassam Khalaf von Jaffa ISBN 978-9950-383-77-7

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feed on; it may also have been a dangerous weapon. The sheer<br />

abundance of ornithomimids — they are the most common small<br />

dinosaurs in North America — are consistent with the idea that<br />

they were plant eaters, as herbivores usually outnumber<br />

carnivores in an ecosystem. The presence of gastroliths in the<br />

stomach of some ornithomimids fit this hypothesis (Wikipedia;<br />

<strong>Khalaf</strong>-<strong>von</strong> <strong>Jaffa</strong>, 2006).<br />

Some paleontologists, like Paul Sereno, consider the enigmatic<br />

alvarezsaurids to be close relatives of the ornithomimosaurs, and<br />

places them together in the superfamily Ornithomimoidea<br />

(Wikipedia; <strong>Khalaf</strong>-<strong>von</strong> <strong>Jaffa</strong>, 2006).<br />

Struthiomimus:<br />

Struthiomimus (―Ostrich-mimic‖) was a long-legged, ostrich-like<br />

dinosaur of the family Ornithomimidae, which lived in Alberta,<br />

Canada during the Late Cretaceous period, about 85 to 80 million<br />

years ago. It was about 1.50 meters (5 feet) tall at the hips and<br />

weighed around 250 kg (500 lbs). Struthiomimus is one of the<br />

more common small dinosaurs in Dinosaur Provincial Park; its<br />

abundance suggests that it was an herbivore or an omnivore<br />

rather than a carnivore. It most likely lived on a diet of lizards,<br />

small mammals, fruits, and seeds, although some scientists<br />

theorize that it may have used its hooked claws to dig up clams<br />

and other shellfish, or possibly eggs (Wikipedia; <strong>Khalaf</strong>-<strong>von</strong> <strong>Jaffa</strong>,<br />

2006).<br />

The legs were long, powerful and seemingly well-suited to rapid<br />

running, like an ostrich. The neck was slender and ended in a<br />

small, beaked skull with relatively large eyes. The 'arms' were<br />

long and fairly strong; the fore limbs were more powerful and the<br />

claws were more strongly hooked than in Ornithomimus. It also<br />

had the typical characteristics of most ornithomimids: a long, stiff<br />

tail and a toothless beak. Predators of Struthiomimus may have<br />

150

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