Discovery and Species
Compsognathus is known from two almost complete skeletons, one from Germany that is 89 cm long (35 in) and another from France that is 125 cm (49 in). The physician and fossil collector Joseph Oberndorfer acquired the German specimen (BSP AS I 563) in 1859, discovered about the same year in the Solnhofen lithographic limestone deposits in the Riedenburg-Kelheim region of Bavaria. The limestone of the Solnhofen area has also yielded such well-preserved fossils as Archaeopteryx with feather impressions and some pterosaurs with imprints of their wing membranes. The German Compsognathus fossil itself most likely came from the Painten Formation of the Kapfelberg locality, specifically dated to the uppermost Kimmeridgian stage (150.8 million years ago); however, alternative possibilities include quarries near Jachenhausen or Goldberg, both from the Tithonian, to which stage Compsognathus has traditionally been dated. Johann A. Wagner discussed the specimen briefly in 1859, when he coined the name Compsognathus longipes, and described it in detail in 1861. In early 1868, Thomas Huxley compared the two species and, following earlier suggestions by Karl Gegenbaur and Edward Drinker Cope, concluded that, apart from its arms and feathers, the Archaeopteryx skeleton was closely similar to Compsognathus, and that the proto-bird was related to the dinosaurs. In 1896, Othniel Marsh recognized the fossil as a true member of the Dinosauria. John Ostrom thoroughly redescribed the species in 1978, making it one of the best-known small theropods at that time. The German specimen is on display at the Bayerische Staatsammlung für Paläontologie und historische Geologie (Bavarian State Institute for Paleontology and Historical Geology) in Munich, Germany, which bought the fossil from Oberndorfer in 1865.
The larger French specimen (MNHN CNJ 79) was discovered by quarry owner Louis Ghirardi around 1971 in the Portlandian lithographic limestone of Canjuers near Nice in southeastern France. It dates to the lower Tithonian. Although Alain Bidar originally described the specimen as a separate species called Compsognathus corallestris, Ostrom, Jean-Guy Michard and others have since relabeled it as another example of Compsognathus longipes. Quimby identified the smaller German specimen as a juvenile of the same species. In 1983, the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris acquired the French Compsognathus fossil; Michard thoroughly studied it there.
Collector Heinrich Fischer had originally labelled a partial foot, also from Solnhofen, as belonging to Compsognathus longipes. Though this identification was rejected by Wilhelm Barnim Dames in 1884, Friedrich von Huene nevertheless in 1925 provisionally referred the specimen to Compsognathus. However, Ostrom's study of 1978 has disproven this. Jens Zinke has in 1998 assigned forty-nine teeth from the Kimmeridgian Guimarota formation of Portugal to the genus. These were not identical to those of C. longipes, having serrations on the front edge, but were because of general similarities in form referred to a Compsognathus sp.
In 1997 Virginia Morell renamed a related Chinese form, Sinosauropteryx prima, into a Compsognathus prima; this has found no general acceptance.
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