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Arminisaurus

Say it: ar-min-ih-SORE-us

Name means: “lizard of Arminius”1

Ate: MeatPlesiosaursEarly JurassicNot technically a dinosaur

Arminisaurus was a small, ancient sea reptile that swam in the warm Jurassic seas. It was an early relative of huge ocean predators like Liopleurodon. This plesiosaur hunted fish and squid with its sharp teeth.1 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

193 to 184 million years ago3

Early Jurassic

Fossils found in

Bielefeld, northwestern Germany1 2

Food

Meat2

Length

3 to 4 m1 2

estimated

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 Arminisaurus compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Arminisaurus lived about 190 million years ago, during the Early Jurassic.1 2

Only about 40 percent of its skeleton was found, including parts of the skull, vertebrae and limb bones.1 2

It is one of only three plesiosaurs ever named from the Pliensbachian stage of the Jurassic.1

Arminisaurus shared features with plesiosaurs that lived 50 million years later, during the Cretaceous.2

The fossil was found in a clay pit that was being mined for bricks.1

Its name honors Arminius, a Germanic chieftain who fought the Romans near where the fossil was found.1

AI-made picture of Arminisaurus — An AI-made picture of how Arminisaurus 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: Arminisaurus
Named by: Sachs and Kear 20173
Group: Plesiosaurs
Family / clade: Pliosauridae3
Classification: Plesiosauria > Pliosauridae > Sauropterygia3
Age of the rocks: 193 to 184 million years (Pliensbachian)3
Rock formations: Amaltheenton3
Countries: Germany3
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: The fossil was found in the early 1980s by fossil collector Lothar Schulz in a clay pit near Bielefeld, Germany. It was named by Sven Sachs and Benjamin Kear in 2017.1 2
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly how Arminisaurus is related to other plesiosaurs, but it seems to be an early relative of the giant pliosaurids.1 2

Where the facts come from

Arminisaurus (en.wikipedia.org)
Ancestor of sea reptile super predators found in Germany, Uppsala University (uu.se)
Arminisaurus 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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