Compsognathus is a Greek word meaning “elegant” “refined” or “dainty” so it makes sense that this word would be the name of the smallest dinosaurs discovered yet. Members of this species of dinosaur could grow to the size of a turkey. Today there are plenty of birds much smaller than a turkey but in the time of dinosaurs, this tiny creature was running around amongst the likes of dinosaurs much larger than any animal today like the T-Rex and the Triceratops.
These dinosaurs lived about 150 million years ago and were typically about the size of a chicken. In addition, this dinosaur is special because it was the first known dinosaur genus to be portrayed with feathers by Thomas Henry Huxley in 1876.
