Anguanax
Anguanax was a plesiosaur, a marine reptile that lived in the warm Jurassic seas. It was a powerful swimmer and a meat-eater, using its long jaws and sharp teeth to catch fish and other soft-bodied prey.1
When did it live?
How big was it?
How long was it?
as long as 4 dogs nose to tail🍌as long as 22 bananas end to end🏊could swim the length of a big swimming pool (50 m) in 6.2 secondsHow big was Anguanax compared to YOU?
Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
How fast was it?
Fun facts
Anguanax is the first articulated skeleton of a plesiosaur ever found in Italy.1
Its name comes from the Anguana, a water spirit in Italian folklore that was part fish and part reptile.1
Anguanax lived about 160 million years ago, during the Late Jurassic period.1
The skeleton was discovered in the 1980s but was not fully studied until 2014 by scientists Andrea Cau and Federico Fanti.1
Anguanax had a large skull compared to its body, which helped scientists identify it as a pliosaurid, a type of plesiosaur.1
Its eye sockets were moderately expanded and faced sideways, suggesting it hunted in the upper layers of the ocean.1
Ask Rex about Anguanax
Rex only answers questions about this page. 10 questions a month.
Rex is an AI and can make mistakes. He runs on servers in the EU and questions are never saved. Never type your name or other personal things.
For dino experts
- Scientific name
- Anguanax
- Named by
- Cau and Fanti 20163
- Group
- Plesiosaurs
- Family / clade
- Pliosauridae3
- Classification
- Plesiosauria > Pliosauridae > Sauropterygia3
- Age of the rocks
- 165 to 159 million years (Callovian / Oxfordian)3
- Rock formations
- Rosso Ammonitico Veronese3
- Countries
- Italy3
- Fossil records
- 1 in the Paleobiology Database3
- Discovery
- The skeleton was collected in the 1980s from a quarry in northern Italy, but it was first described and named Anguanax zignoi by Andrea Cau and Federico Fanti in 2015. The species name honors Achille de Zigno, who found the first plesiosaur remains in the same area in the 1800s.1
- Still debated
- Scientists are still debating exactly how Anguanax is related to other plesiosaurs, with some analyses placing it as a basal pliosaurid and others as a sister group to different lineages.2
Where the facts come from
- Anguanax (en.wikipedia.org)
- High evolutionary rates and the origin of the Rosso Ammonitico Veronese Formation (Middle-Upper Jurassic of Italy) reptiles (cris.unibo.it)
- Anguanax 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.
Rex is hungry! Dino Wiki is a dad's project for his dino-loving son, free with no ads. Grown-ups can feed Rex a snack to help keep it online.Feed Rex
Elasmosaurus
Pliosaurus
Plesiosaurus
Cimoliasaurus
Colymbosaurus
Trinacromerum
Ichthyosaurus
Khudiakovia
Ophthalmosaurus
Pterodactylus
Rhamphocephalus
Gongbusaurus