Compsognathus is a genus of small, bipedal, carnivorous theropod dinosaur. Members of its single species could grow to around the size of a turkey. They lived about 150 million years ago, during the Tithonian age of the late Jurassic period.
About Compsognathus in brief
Compsognathus is a genus of small, bipedal, carnivorous theropod dinosaur. Members of its single species could grow to around the size of a turkey. They lived about 150 million years ago, during the Tithonian age of the late Jurassic period. 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. Until the 1990s, it was the smallest-known non-avialan dinosaur, with the preceding centuries incorrectly labelling them as the closest relative of Archaeopteryx. The number of digits on the hand of Comps Cognathus has been a source of debate. For much of its history, Comps cognathus was typically depicted with three digits, as is typical for theropods. However, the type specimen only preserved phalanges from the first two digits, leading to the suggestion that Compsognithus bore only two functional digits. The third metacarpal of the French specimen indicated that the third digit bore at least one or two smallphalanges. But there remains no evidence for an unugal phalanx on the third digits, so the digit may have been reduced and non-functional.
Some relatives of Compsythus have been preserved with the remains of simple feathers covering the body like proto-feathers. Some scientists suggest that Compsyckus might have been feathered in a similar way to modern day feathered birds. The largest Compsychathus specimen is estimated to have weighed somewhere between 0. 83 and 3. 5 kg. The skull had five pairs of fenestrae, the largest of which was for the orbit. The eyes were larger in proportion to the rest of the skull. The lower jaw was slender and had no mandibular fenESTra, a hole in the side of the lower jawbone commonly seen in archosaurs. Its frontmost teeth were unserrated, unlike those further back in the jaw which were flattened and more strongly recurved. The teeth were small but sharp, suited for its diet of small vertebrates and possibly other small animals, such as insects. It is one of the few dinosaur species whose diet is known with certainty. The remains of small lizards are preserved in the bellies of both specimens. Scientists have used these dental characteristics to identify Compsyctus and its closest relatives.
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This page is based on the article Compsognathus published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 02, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
