Juravenator is a genus of small (75 cm long) coelurosaurian theropod dinosaur (although a 2020 study proposed it to be a hatchling megalosauroid[1]), which lived about 151 or 152 million years ago in the area that would someday become the top of the Franconian Jura of Germany (Painten Formation).

[2] However, a patch of fossilized Juravenator skin (from the tail, between the eighth and twenty-second vertebra, and lower hind leg) shows primarily normal dinosaur scales, as well as traces of what may be simple feathers.

The first follow-up study to the initial description reported that faint impressions of filamentous structures, possibly primitive feathers, were present along the top of the tail and hips.

The examination under UV revealed a more extensive covering of filament-like structures, similar in anatomy to the primitive feathers of other compsognathids, including Sinosauropteryx.

The investigation also discovered additional patches of soft tissue, on the snout and the lower leg, and vertical collagen fibres between the chevrons of the tail vertebrae.

[3] Foth et al. (2020) reinterpreted purported scales preserved with the holotype specimen of J. starki as remains of adipocere, possibly indicating the presence of a fat body.

[1] Christophe Hendrickx and Phil R. Bell reexamine the specimen of Juravenator, they find that the scaly integument on the tail show the presence of integumentary sense organs.

[7] By 2001 the fossil had generated some publicity and was nicknamed Borsti in the German press, a name commonly given to bristle-haired dogs, on the assumption the creature was endowed with bristly protofeathers.

[2] The holotype, JME Sch 200, was found in the Malm Epsilon 2, a marl layer of the Painten Formation dating to the late Kimmeridgian, about 151 to 152 million years old.

Additional work published by Luis Chiappe and Ursula Göhlich in 2010 found that Juravenator was most similar in anatomy to Compsognathus, and that it probably did belong to the Compsognathidae if that is actually a natural group.

[3] In 2011 Cristiano dal Sasso and Simone Maganuco published an analysis which recovered the Compsognathidae as a natural group and Juravenator belonging to it as a sister species of Sinosauropteryx.

[11] Foth et al. (2020) considered it plausible that Juravenator may have been a non-coelurosaurian tetanuran, potentially part of the megalosauroid group along with the similar Sciurumimus.

[8] The specimen was found in almost in full articulation (bones still connected together), only the skull, pelvic girdle, and front section of the tail were disarticulated to some degree.

Some discussion have revolved around the original orientation of the fossil within the rock, that is if the slab was prepared from its top or bottom site, or whether the individual lay on its back or its belly.

Chiappe and Göhlich, in their 2010 description, assumed that it lay on its belly,[3] an interpretation that is further supported by an aptychus (body part of an ammonite) found within the slab; aptychi are almost always embedded with their concave sides pointing upwards.

Reisdorf and Wuttke concluded that death poses resulted from the release of elastic ligaments during decay that spanned the vertebral column.