Dino card No. 0132 of 2,027

Apatodonosaurus

Say it: a-PAT-oh-don-oh-SORE-us

Name means: “deceptive tooth lizard”2

Ate: MeatIchthyosaursLate JurassicNot technically a dinosaur

Apatodonosaurus was a fast-swimming marine reptile that lived in the Jurassic seas. It looked a bit like a dolphin but was a reptile, not a fish or a dinosaur. It used its long snout and sharp teeth to catch fish and squid.2

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

Lived

162 to 155 million years ago2

Late Jurassic

Fossils found in

Fremont County, Wyoming, USA2

Food

Meat2

Length

3 to 4 m2

estimated from related ichthyosaurs

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

as long as 4 dogs nose to tailas long as 22 bananas end to end

How big was Apatodonosaurus compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Apatodonosaurus was named in 1928 by M. G. Mehl.2

It belongs to the family Ophthalmosauridae, a group of ichthyosaurs with very large eyes.1

The only known species is Apatodonosaurus grayi.2

Its fossils were found in the Sundance Formation, which was once a shallow sea.2

Ichthyosaurs like Apatodonosaurus gave birth to live young, not eggs.1

Apatodonosaurus lived during the Oxfordian age of the Jurassic Period, about 161 to 155 million years ago.2

AI-made picture of Apatodonosaurus — An AI-made picture of how Apatodonosaurus 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: Apatodonosaurus
Named by: Mehl 19282
Group: Ichthyosaurs
Family / clade: Ophthalmosauridae2
Classification: Ichthyosauria > Ichthyosauromorpha2
Age of the rocks: 162 to 155 million years (Oxfordian)2
Rock formations: Sundance2
Countries: USA2
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database2
Discovery: Apatodonosaurus was named by M. G. Mehl in 1928 based on fossils from Wyoming, USA. The type species is Apatodonosaurus grayi.2
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly how large Apatodonosaurus grew, because only a few fossils have been found.2

Where the facts come from

PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
Apatodonosaurus 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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