Compsognathus longipes

Name: “elegant jaw"

Length: 1 m

Height: 30 cm

Weight: 3 kg

Diet: carnivore

Time: Jurassic

Location: Europe (Germany)

Compsognathus (pronounced Komp-so-Nath-us, Greek kompsos; “elegant”, “refined” or “dainty”, and gnathos; “jaw”) was a small, bipedal, carnivorous theropod dinosaur. The animal was the size of a turkey and lived around 150 million years ago, the early Tithonian stage of the late Jurassic Period, in what is now Europe. Paleontologists have found two well-preserved fossils, one in Germany in the 1850s and the second in France more than a century later. Many popular presentations still describe Compsognathus as a “chicken-sized” dinosaur because of the small size of the German specimen, which is now believed to be a juvenile form of the larger French specimen. Compsognathus is one of the few dinosaurs for which the diet is known with certainty: the remains of small, agile lizards are preserved in the bellies of both specimens. Teeth discovered in Portugal may be further fossil remains of the genus.