PBDB Taxon – Liliensternus
Paleobiology Database
Reviewed: 9/4/2026
Extinct taxon; conservation status NE
Open source
Liliensternus liliensterni
Liliensternus was a slender, two-legged predator roughly five metres long and weighing somewhere between 100 and 200 kilograms. It carried its body horizontally, balanced by a long, stiffened tail that was held clear of the ground rather than dragged behind it.
Liliensternus
Liliensternus liliensterni
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Quick facts
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Weight
100–200 kg
Length
5–5.2 m
Diet
Carnivore
Period
Triassic
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Liliensternus next to Plateosaurus and a human, to the same scale.
Liliensternus liliensterni
Plateosaurus trossingensis
100–200 kg
5–5.2 m
Triassic
Bipedal
1.2–1.6 m
35 km/h
Carnivore
One recorded fossil find, in Germany. First described in 1934 by Huene.
Sites and counts from the Paleobiology Database
The timeline shows the whole age of dinosaurs – and how much time has passed since. The glowing part is when Liliensternus lived.
million years ago
Lived 214–208 million years ago
If the whole age of dinosaurs were a single day, Liliensternus lived at 05:17.
Chapter • Meet the dinosaur
Liliensternus was a slender, two-legged predator roughly five metres long and weighing somewhere between 100 and 200 kilograms. It carried its body horizontally, balanced by a long, stiffened tail that was held clear of the ground rather than dragged behind it. The neck was long and gently curved, and the low, narrow skull was lined with numerous small, recurved, serrated teeth well suited to slicing flesh from small and medium-sized prey. Its arms were short but muscular and ended in four fingers, three of which bore substantial claws. Whether Liliensternus sported a pair of low head crests, as its relative Dilophosaurus did, remains uncertain: early reconstructions showed them, but the skull material is too fragmentary to settle the question.
Chapter • Where it lived
Liliensternus lived about 214 to 208 million years ago, during the Norian stage of the Late Triassic. Its fossils come from the red beds of the Löwenstein and Trossingen formations near Trossingen in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The region was a vast continental interior of broad floodplains and seasonal rivers, with pronounced dry seasons, drifting sand and mudflats broken up by stands of conifers, ferns and horsetails. Herds of Plateosaurus roamed this landscape, and the same deposits preserve early crocodile relatives and other archosaurs — plenty of prey, but also plenty of competition.
Chapter • Wild behavior
Diurnal
Liliensternus is the largest known meat-eating dinosaur from the Triassic of Europe.
It is named after Hugo Rühle von Lilienstern, a German physician who built a remarkable private fossil collection.
Friedrich von Huene described the species in 1934, but placed it in the genus Halticosaurus.
The separate genus Liliensternus was not erected until 1984, by American palaeontologist Samuel Welles.
The known material comes from at least two individuals found together at Trossingen in south-western Germany.
Its bones were hollow and air-filled, the same weight-saving system seen in modern birds.
It shared its world with the long-necked plant-eater Plateosaurus and may have preyed on juveniles.
No skin impressions are known, so whether early coelophysoids had any filament-like body covering is still an open question.
Chapter • Scientific place
Paleobiology Database
Reviewed: 9/4/2026
Extinct taxon; conservation status NE
Open sourceJournal of Vertebrate Paleontology
Reviewed: 9/4/2026
Peer-reviewed systematic revision that evaluates the genus Liliensternus and its placement among coelophysoid neotheropods, supporting the Dinosauria–Saurischia–Theropoda–Neotheropoda–Coelophysoidea lineage.
Open sourcePaleobiology Database
Reviewed: 9/4/2026
Database taxon page listing the recorded fossil collections and localities for Liliensternus, all from the Upper Triassic of Germany (Löwenstein/Trossingen formations, Europe).
Open sourcePalaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments (Springer)
Reviewed: 9/4/2026
Sedimentological and taphonomic study of the Trossingen Formation red beds documenting the seasonally dry floodplain and mudflat palaeoenvironment in which Liliensternus and Plateosaurus were buried.
Open sourceNatural History Museum, London
Reviewed: 9/4/2026
Museum profile classifying Liliensternus as a meat-eating (carnivorous) theropod dinosaur.
Open sourceNatural History Museum, London
Reviewed: 9/4/2026
Authoritative museum overview of Liliensternus covering its size, body form, age and German occurrence, used as the general reference for the sv, en, da and no description texts.
Open sourceNatural History Museum, London
Reviewed: 9/4/2026
Authoritative museum overview of Liliensternus covering its size, body form, age and German occurrence, used as the general reference for the sv, en, da and no description texts.
Open sourceNatural History Museum, London
Reviewed: 9/4/2026
Authoritative museum overview of Liliensternus covering its size, body form, age and German occurrence, used as the general reference for the sv, en, da and no description texts.
Open sourceNatural History Museum, London
Reviewed: 9/4/2026
Authoritative museum overview of Liliensternus covering its size, body form, age and German occurrence, used as the general reference for the sv, en, da and no description texts.
Open source