Compsognathus

Subtitle

by Mikko Mikko.

Straight Outta Compsognathus! Said this tiny fellow as it hatched out of the tiny egg their tiny mother had laid.

Compsognathus (/kɒmpˈsɒɡnəθəs/;[1] Greek kompsos/κομψός; “elegant”, “refined” or “dainty”, and gnathos/γνάθος; “jaw”)[2] is a genus of small, bipedal, carnivorous theropod dinosaurs. Members of its single species Compsognathus longipes could grow to the size of a turkey. They lived about 150 million years ago, the Tithonian age 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. Today, C. longipes is the only recognized species, although the larger specimen discovered in France in the 1970s was once thought to belong to a separate species and named C. corallestris.

Many presentations still describe Compsognathus as “chicken-sized” dinosaurs because of the small size of the German specimen, which is now believed to be a juvenile. Compsognathus longipes is one of the few dinosaur species for which 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.