Compsognathus, the "Elegant Jaw,"
may be an adorably small creature,
but it is truely an opportunistic
carnivore with a bad attitude. With
a length of a meter and the height
of half a meter, some members of 
the species managed to grow to
the size of turkies, but not much 
more. Commonly called a "compy," 
several fossil finds of this 
creature are nearly complete and 
very well preserved; due to the 
remarkable integrity of the remains,
the contents of compsognathus'
belly have been fossilized. This
gives paleontologists a clear idea 
of its diet, which is not very 
common amongst dinosaurs due to the 
precarious nature of the fossil 
record.

During the Late Jurassic, the 
compsognathus lived in the tropical
achipelago that is now Europe. 
Fossil evidence (or lack thereof) 
hints that compsognathus may have 
been the only dinosaur on the 
European archipelago, living with
small avian creatures like archae-
opteryx and rhamphorhynchus, which
occupied very different niches from
its own, leaving it to be the top
land predator in the region. It
preyed on small vertebrates such as
lizards, which were found fossilized 
in its belly. Its small frame and
and long tail and limbs permitted 
swift movement, which allowed it to 
outrun and outmaneuver other small 
creatures that would be its prey.
