Estimated to have been about 1 m (3 ft) in length and 1–40 kg (2–90 lb) in weight, Podokesaurus was lightly constructed with hollow bones, and would have been similar to Coelophysis, being slender, long-necked, and with sharp, recurved teeth.

Podokesaurus is thought to have been collected from the Portland Formation, the age of which has long been unclear, but is currently believed to date to the Hettangian–Sinemurian stages of the Early Jurassic, between 201 and 190 million years ago.

In 1910, the American geologist Mignon Talbot was walking with her sister Ellen to Holyoke, Massachusetts, in the eastern US, when they passed a farm and noticed a small hill nearby.

Talbot noticed a white streak on a sandstone boulder at the bottom of the gravel pit, and upon discovering these were bones, she told her sister she had found a "real live fossil".

[1][2][3][4] The next day she brought a group of workmen to collect the specimen, and found another piece of sandstone that contained the rest of the fossil as well as impressions of those in the first slab.

[9] The American paleontologist Robert T. Bakker stated in 2014 that while old professors grumbled that women were unfit for working with fossils during his time at university, Talbot's discovery of Podokesaurus was a counterargument to that.

[10] By the time the description was published, Talbot had sent the fossil to the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University for further preparation and study, where cast replicas were also made of the bones as they lay in the rock.

There, Lull drew a reconstruction of the skeleton, basing the parts missing from the fossil on the equivalents in Compsognathus, and created a model of the animal in life, which Talbot later described as having a "sardonic smile".

Lull suggested that the boulder containing the fossil must have come from a ledge which lay on the south side of the Holyoke Range, about two or three miles north of where it was found, and specified that it was from the Longmeadow Sandstone.

[13] Talbot wanted the fossil to stay at Yale or Washington on permanent exhibit, where it could "be with its kind", but it was kept at Mount Holyoke in the old science building, Williston Hall, as a local specimen, where it became a "pet curiosity" for the students.

[17] In 1995, the writer Jan Peczkis estimated Podokesaurus to have weighed 10–40 kg (22–88 lb), through pelvic height determination (based on von Huene's measurements).

[25] Talbot stated in 1937 that those scientists who had seen the specimen did not think it was a young individual as there were no indications of cartilage that would turn to bone with age,[1] while Paul thought it was possibly juvenile.

[8][6][7] While the hind part of the tail was located some distance away from the rest of the skeleton, Lull believed it was in its natural position and that it would have been very long, the intermediate vertebrae having been swept away.

Lull found it similar to that of Ornitholestes, apart from the radial crest (that connected with the radius bone of the lower arm) not being as high, showing little muscular power.

[12] Colbert and Baird suggested the pubis was directed forwards, but that it curved slightly upwards instead of downwards due to natural warping and cracking of the bone.

[6][8][7] When reading her preliminary description in 1910, Talbot suggested Podokesaurus to have been an "herbivorous dinosaur", but further work at Yale University showed that some bones had been incorrectly identified, and the ischium of the pelvis with a well-developed ridge was found to resemble that of Compsognathus.

She refrained from making a definite classification of the specimen in her 1911 description due to the lack of jaw and foot-bones which could have aided in this, but concluded it would have belonged to a "carnivorous dinosaur" based on the shape and position of the pubis, as well as the absence of a postpubis.

[6] In 1916, Heilmann pointed out that early dinosaurs, parasuchians, and pterosaurs all had similarities to birds, as well as to each other, and that Triassic reptiles like Scleromochlus, Saltopus, and Podokesaurus, were difficult to separate.

[17] In 1977, the paleontologists Paul E. Olsen and Peter Galton redated the Newark Supergroup (which the Portland Formation belongs to) to the Early Jurassic instead of the preceding Triassic as was previously thought.

[14] The paleontologist Kevin Padian stated in 1986 that while Colbert's suggestion of synonymy was possible, the discernible similarities between Podokesaurus and Coelophysis were primitive theropod features, and the two were not as close in time as once thought.

[38] In 1990, the paleontologists Timothy Rowe and Jacques Gauthier considered Podokesauridae a taxonomic waste-basket, wherein taxa had been grouped based on phenetic resemblance and stratigraphic division, and therefore under continuous revision and instability.

They considered it possible that Podokesaurus and the natural cast specimen were Coelophysis, but found that their similarities were not shared exclusively by them, but were ancestral features among theropods.

[39] In the same volume, the paleontologist David B. Norman agreed with this assessment, and stated the features used to unite Podokesaurus with Coelophysis merely confirm that they were dinosaurs rather than establish a specific relation between them.

[41] The paleontologist Ronald S. Tykoski and Rowe noted in 2004 that while Podokesaurus had coelophysoid features (such as a small, knob-like expansion on the lower part of the pubis), it did not have any derived traits that would unite it with Coelophysis.

[43] Carrano and colleagues stated in 2004 that Segisaurus and Podokesaurus were among the latest-surviving coelophysoids, and that the evolutionary radiation of this group may have ended by the latest part of the Early Jurassic.

[25] Talbot suggested that the short, slender humerus, long, straight hindlimb bones, and the well-developed fourth trochanter of the femur indicated that Podokesaurus was bipedal.

Talbot also reported a small piece of smooth, polished quartz among the ribs, and suggested it could have been a gastrolith (stomach stone), and so the first time these were found in association with a carnivorous dinosaur.

With its large fourth trocanther, he thought Podokesaurus had probably abandoned this jumping gait, instead moving with rapid, alternating steps similar to ratite birds.

[49] The writer Donald F. Glut suggested in 1997 that a slab with tracks from the Brunswick Formation of New York previously attributed to Coelophysis may instead have been produced by Podokesaurus, based on its Jurassic age.

[52][6] The Portland Group represents the uppermost part of the Newark Supergroup, and was deposited after the Central Atlantic magmatic province was formed during the end of the Triassic and the beginning of the Jurassic.