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Avalonnectes

Say it: AV-uh-lon-NEK-teez

Name means: “Avalon swimmer”1

Ate: MeatPlesiosaursEarly JurassicNot technically a dinosaur

Avalonnectes was a small, early plesiosaur that swam in the seas near what is now England, about 200 million years ago. It had a short body and four flippers, and it was one of the very first plesiosaurs to appear after the Triassic,Jurassic extinction.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

201 to 200 million years ago4

Early Jurassic

Fossils found in

Street, Somerset, England, United Kingdom3

Food

Meat2

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

cool stuff

Fun facts

Avalonnectes had only 18 or 19 dorsal vertebrae, which is a very low number for a plesiosaur.1

Its skull was only about 180 mm long, making it one of the smallest plesiosaurs of its time.1

Avalonnectes lived in the earliest Jurassic, just after the Triassic,Jurassic extinction event, about 199.6 to 198 million years ago.3

The name Avalonnectes comes from Avalon, the legendary island of King Arthur, which is linked to Glastonbury near where the fossils were found.1

Avalonnectes is known from two partial skeletons, including the holotype NHMUK 14550, which has part of the skull and much of the body.3

It belonged to a group called Rhomaleosauridae, which were early plesiosaurs with short necks and large heads.2

AI-made picture of Avalonnectes — An AI-made picture of how Avalonnectes 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: Avalonnectes
Named by: Benson et al. 20124
Group: Plesiosaurs
Family / clade: Rhomaleosauridae4
Classification: Plesiosauria > Sauropterygia4
Age of the rocks: 201 to 200 million years (Hettangian)4
Rock formations: Blue Lias4
Countries: United Kingdom4
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database4
Discovery: Avalonnectes was named in 2012 by Roger Benson and colleagues based on fossils collected in the 19th century from Street, Somerset, England. The species name arturi honors Arthur Cruickshank, a scientist who studied early plesiosaurs.1

Where the facts come from

High Diversity, Low Disparity and Small Body Size in Plesiosaurs (Reptilia, Sauropterygia) from the Triassic, Jurassic Boundary | PLOS One (journals.plos.org)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
Avalonnectes (en.wikipedia.org)
Avalonnectes 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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