# Compsognathus longipes

> A chicken-sized predatory dinosaur from the Late Jurassic lagoons of Bavaria, one of the first nearly complete dinosaur skeletons ever found. Its type specimen still holds the lizard it swallowed.

- Classification: Dinosauria (clade) > Saurischia (clade) > Theropoda (clade) > Coelurosauria (clade) > Compsognathidae (family) > Compsognathus (genus) > Compsognathus longipes (species)
- Length: 0.7–1.4 m
- Hip height: 0.2–0.3 m
- Mass: 0.3–3.5 kg
- Age: 152.2–145.1 million years ago (Late Jurassic)
- Fossils found in: Painten Formation (Bavaria); Germany
- Diet: carnivore
- Described: Johann Andreas Wagner, 1861
- In films: The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), Jurassic Park III (2001), Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018), Jurassic World Dominion (2022), Jurassic World Rebirth (2025)

Canonical page: https://dinodex.club/dinosaurs/compsognathus-longipes
Last updated: 2026-09-27

## Overview

Compsognathus longipes lived about 150 million years ago on the islands of the Solnhofen archipelago in what is now Bavaria, Germany. The skeleton was collected in the 1850s for the physician Joseph Oberndorfer and described by Johann Andreas Wagner; it is kept in Munich (BSPG AS I 563). A larger skeleton from Canjuers, France, described in 1972 as a separate species, is now usually included in the same species.

It was a light, long-legged, two-legged hunter, under a metre long in the German specimen and well over a metre in the French one. For much of its history it was the smallest known dinosaur.

A lizard lies inside the rib cage of the German skeleton; in 2018 Jack Conrad described it as a new species, making it "a holotype inside a holotype". The skeleton's strongly arched neck, once blamed on death throes, is better explained by what happens to a carcass after death (Reisdorf & Wuttke 2012).

## Name meaning

"Elegant jaw", from Greek kompsos ("elegant, dainty") and gnathos ("jaw"); longipes, Latin for "long foot" (Wagner).

## Sources

1. (2026). Paleobiology Database: Compsognathus occurrences. The Paleobiology Database (paleobiodb.org), data service 1.2, accessed 2026-09-23. https://paleobiodb.org/data1.2/occs/list.txt?base_name=Compsognathus&show=coords,paleoloc,strat,loc,ref&pgm=gplates
2. (2026). Wikipedia: Compsognathus. Wikipedia (English), accessed 2026-09-23. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compsognathus
3. Conrad, J. L. (2018). A new lizard (Squamata) was the last meal of Compsognathus (Theropoda: Dinosauria) and is a holotype in a holotype. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 183: 584-634. https://doi.org/10.1093/zoolinnean/zlx055
4. Paul, G. S. (2016). The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs (2nd edition). Princeton University Press.
5. Peyer, K. (2006). A reconsideration of Compsognathus from the upper Tithonian of Canjuers, southeastern France. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 26: 879-896. https://doi.org/10.1671/0272-4634(2006)26[879:AROCFT]2.0.CO;2
6. Reisdorf, A. G. & Wuttke, M. (2012). Re-evaluating Moodie's opisthotonic-posture hypothesis in fossil vertebrates. Part I: Reptiles - the taphonomy of the bipedal dinosaurs Compsognathus longipes and Juravenator starki from the Solnhofen Archipelago (Jurassic, Germany). Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments 92: 119-168. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12549-011-0068-y
7. Wagner, J. A. (1861). Neue Beiträge zur Kenntniss der urweltlichen Fauna des lithographischen Schiefers. Abhandlungen der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.

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Cite as: "Compsognathus longipes". DinoDex. https://dinodex.club/dinosaurs/compsognathus-longipes (updated 2026-09-27).