In 1981, Italian amateur palaeontologist Giovanni Todesco discovered the remains of a new species of dinosaur from the early Cretaceous period. Initially, he decided that the fossil of a small theropod he found must have been the remains of some bird. After watching the film adaptation of Jurassic park in 1993, he came to the conclusion that it might be the remains of a dinosaur.
The fossil was recognized as the first Italian dinosaur of the same year by palaeontologists Cristiana dal Sasso of the Natural History Museum in Milan and Marco Signore of the University of Fryderyk II of Naples. The new species of celosaur was named Scipionyx in honour of the Roman commander and slayer of the Carthaginians during the Second Punic War, Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus the Elder. The second part of the name onyx means “claw” in Greek.
