Dino card No. 0187 of 2,027

Athabascasaurus

Say it: ath-uh-BAS-kuh-SORE-us

Name means: “Athabasca lizard”1

Ate: MeatIchthyosaursEarly CretaceousNot technically a dinosaur

Athabascasaurus was a medium-sized ichthyosaur, a marine reptile that swam in the ancient seas of Alberta, Canada, about 112 million years ago. It looked a bit like a dolphin with a long snout and big eyes, and it was a fast, meat-eating hunter.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

113 to 110 million years ago2

Early Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Alberta, Canada, in the Clearwater Formation near Fort McMurray1 2

Food

Meat2 1

Length

3.5 m1

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

as long as 2 bicycles in a rowas long as 19 bananas end to end

How big was Athabascasaurus compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Athabascasaurus had 42 vertebrae in front of its hips, which is an unusually low number for an ophthalmosaurid ichthyosaur.1

Its name comes from the Athabasca River, which flows through the oil sands area where the fossil was found.1

The only known fossil of Athabascasaurus was discovered in 2000 at an open-pit oil sands mine, and it is now kept at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta.1

This ichthyosaur had a unique feature on its skull: a triangular projection on the postfrontal bone that extended over the postorbital bone.1

Athabascasaurus lived during the Early Cretaceous period, about 112 to 109 million years ago, when Alberta was covered by a warm, shallow sea.1 2

AI-made picture of Athabascasaurus — An AI-made picture of how Athabascasaurus 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: Athabascasaurus
Named by: Druckenmiller and Maxwell 20102
Group: Ichthyosaurs
Family / clade: Ophthalmosauridae2
Classification: Ichthyosauria > Ichthyosauromorpha2
Age of the rocks: 113 to 110 million years (Albian)2
Rock formations: Clearwater2
Countries: Canada2
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database2
Discovery: Athabascasaurus was named by Patrick S. Druckenmiller and Erin E. Maxwell in 2010, based on a nearly complete skeleton found in an oil sands mine in Alberta, Canada.1 2
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly how far forward the long processes on the supratemporal bones extended on the skull.1

Where the facts come from

Athabascasaurus (en.wikipedia.org)
Athabascasaurus 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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