Dino card No. 0023 of 2,027

Acuetzpalin

Say it: ah-KWEHT-sah-PAH-leen

Name means: “water lizard in Classical Nahuatl”1

Ate: MeatIchthyosaursLate JurassicNot technically a dinosaur

Acuetzpalin was a fast-swimming marine reptile that lived in the warm seas of Mexico during the Late Jurassic. It looked a bit like a dolphin but was actually an ichthyosaur, a group of ocean predators. Its long snout was full of sharp teeth for catching fish and squid.3 1

Fun fact: this sea reptile swam while dinosaurs walked on land. Everyone calls them dinos, but they were a different branch of reptiles.

Lived

155 to 149 million years ago3

Late Jurassic

Fossils found in

Cerro de Palotes, Durango, Mexico3 2

Food

Meat3

Length

3.1 m1

estimate based on the partial skeleton

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

as long as 3 dogs nose to tailas long as 17 bananas end to end

How big was Acuetzpalin compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Acuetzpalin was named in 2020, making it the first new ichthyosaur genus described since 2017.1

Its skull was very well preserved, even though the rest of the skeleton was missing some parts.1

Acuetzpalin belonged to a group called ophthalmosaurids, which were the most advanced ichthyosaurs.2

It lived about 150 million years ago during the Kimmeridgian stage of the Jurassic.3

The fossils were found in the La Casita Formation, which was once a shallow sea.1 2

Acuetzpalin is only known from one partial skeleton, so scientists are still learning about it.1

AI-made picture of Acuetzpalin — An AI-made picture of how Acuetzpalin might have looked, made by a computer from what scientists know. It is a guess: the real animal may have looked different, and nobody knows its true colours.

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For dino experts

Scientific name: Acuetzpalin
Named by: Barrientos-Lara and Alvarado-Ortega 20203
Group: Ichthyosaurs
Family / clade: Ophthalmosauridae3
Classification: Ichthyosauria > Ichthyosauromorpha3
Age of the rocks: 155 to 149 million years (Kimmeridgian)3
Rock formations: La Casita3
Countries: Mexico3
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: Acuetzpalin was discovered by students from the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1979 and 1980, led by professors Oscar Carranza Castañeda and René Hernández Rivera. It was named and described by Jair Israel Barrientos-Lara and Jesús Alvarado-Ortega in 2020.2 3
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly how big Acuetzpalin grew, because the only known skeleton is missing its tail and limbs.1

Where the facts come from

Acuetzpalin (en.wikipedia.org)
Acuetzpalin carranzai gen et sp. nov. A new ophthalmosauridae (Ichthyosauria) from the Upper Jurassic of Durango, North Mexico (sciencedirect.com)
Acuetzpalin in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.

Every fact on this page has a number that points to its source. If we got something wrong, sorry, we are dino fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.

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