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On this day in 1947, Museum paleontologists working at New Mexico’s Ghost Ranch site turned up an amazing find—a bone bed containing numerous stunningly preserved specimens of the dinosaur Coelophysis bauri. Bones found in the belly of one individual led scientists to think this dinosaur ate its own kind, and this theory persisted for many years. 

Since 2000, a bronze cast of Coelophysis’ fossilized remains has been  among the fossils visitors can see and touch in the 81st Street subway station when visiting the Museum. 

While waiting for a train one night, paleontologist Sterling Nesbitt—then a doctoral student at the Museum—was looking at this cast when he noticed that something was... off. Back at the Museum, Nesbitt and his advisor, Curator Mark Norell, decided to take a closer look at the Coelophysis fossils in the Museum’s collections. They ultimately concluded that the bones in the dinosaur’s stomach belonged to one of the many animals in the same area, not another Coelophysis.

“Coelophysis was just hungry,” Nesbitt says. “It was eating another animal that lived at the same time, and it wasn’t a cannibal.”

You can also spot the remains of this dinosaur in the Museum’s Hall of Saurischian Dinosaurs!