Dino card No. 0329 of 2,027

Callawayia

Say it: kal-uh-WAY-ee-uh

Name means: “named after ichthyosaur researcher Jack Callaway”1

Ate: MeatIchthyosaursLate TriassicNot technically a dinosaur

Callawayia was a small, fast-swimming marine reptile that lived in the Late Triassic oceans. It looked a bit like a dolphin but was actually an ichthyosaur, not a dinosaur.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

227 to 206 million years ago3

Late Triassic

Fossils found in

British Columbia, Canada1 3

Food

Meat2

Length

2 to 2.5 m1

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

as long as 2.5 dogs nose to tailas long as 14 bananas end to end

How big was Callawayia compared to YOU?

Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.

cool stuff

Fun facts

Callawayia had more than 54 vertebrae in front of its hips, giving it a long, flexible body.1

Its front flippers had four digits, but its back flippers only had three.1

The first two neck vertebrae of Callawayia were not fused together, unlike in some other ichthyosaurs.1

A tiny bone called a pisiform was present in each foreflipper, which is unusual for ichthyosaurs.1

The humerus (upper arm bone) was short and wide with a notched front edge.1

AI-made picture of Callawayia — An AI-made picture of how Callawayia 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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Myth buster

Myth: Callawayia is sometimes called a dinosaur.

Truth: Callawayia was an ichthyosaur, a marine reptile that lived in the ocean, not a dinosaur. Dinosaurs lived on land.1

For dino experts

Scientific name: Callawayia
Named by: Maisch and Matzke 20003
Group: Ichthyosaurs
Family / clade: Californosauridae3
Classification: Ichthyosauria > Ichthyosauromorpha3
Age of the rocks: 227 to 206 million years (Norian)3
Rock formations: Pardonet3
Countries: Canada3
Fossil records: 2 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: The first fossil was found in 1987 on the shore of Williston Lake in British Columbia, Canada. It was named Callawayia in 2000 by Michael Maisch and Andreas Matzke.1
Still debated: Scientists still debate whether a species from China called 'Callawayia wolonggangense' really belongs to the same genus.1

Where the facts come from

Callawayia (en.wikipedia.org)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
Callawayia 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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