Skeleton lacking only the distal half of the tail. Additional material referred to this species includes a less well preserved but somewhat larger skeleton from the Kimmeridgian limestones of Canjuers near Nice in Southern France.The osteology of the two known specimens of Compsognathus has been revised by Ostrom (1978); it is paradoxically one of very few well-preserved small theropod dinosaurs and yet is not clearly attributable to one or another of the higherlevel categories of theropods. 

The reconstruction of the holotype skeleton of the dinosaur gives an estimated length of 700 mm; the original specimen suffers from a little postmortem chrushing and distortion, in particular, to the areas around the skull, forelimbs and abdomen. 

The skull is long and low, with a sharply tapering snout, and is very lightly constructed, there being verry large openings that break op the dermal shield into a narrow median skull roofformed of the paired premaxillae, nasals,frontals, and parietals-none of which show any sign of fusion. 

Lateral to, and beneath, the skull roof there are a series of openings, seperated by narrow spars of bone thet connect with the tooth-bearing, lower margin of the skull. The most prominent of the skull openings is the orbit. The lower jaw is very slender, whith nearly parallel upper and lower margins. There is no evidence of either a coronoid precess or an external mandibular fenestra (extremely unusual for theropods). 

Caudal vertebrae are known from the first sixteen of the series; proximal ones resemble those of the dorsal series in that they are long, slender, and somewhat spoolshaped. There are no pleurocoels or transverse processes, and the centra seem to be amphiplatyan. 

Small curved chevrons are present beneath the tail. Ribs are present troughout the presacral column. The cervical ribs are not fused to the vetebrae and are double-headed, tapering to an extremely fine end. Fine bony gastralia are preserved.Compsognathus corallestris has its manus portions obscured by a piece of plant debris, which caused its describers to suggest that its forelimbs were modified into flippers.