Dino card No. 0388 of 2,015

Chaohusaurus

Say it: CHOW-hoo-SORE-us

Name means: “lake Chao Hu lizard”1

Ate: MeatIchthyosaursEarly Triassic to Middle TriassicNot technically a dinosaur

Chaohusaurus was an early marine reptile that lived in the sea, not a dinosaur. It looked a bit like a lizard with flippers and a long tail, and it was one of the smallest ichthyosaurs ever found.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

251 to 237 million years ago3

Early Triassic to Middle Triassic

Fossils found in

Chaohu and Yuan'an, China1

Food

Meat1 2

Length

0.7 to 1 m1

Weight

1.3 kg to 3.1 kg1

Artist's life restoration of Chaohusaurus — How Chaohusaurus may have looked, by Nobu Tamura (http://spinops.blogspot.com). CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons. Scientists still argue about colours and details.

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

Chaohusaurus gave birth to live babies in the water, not eggs on land. One fossil shows a mother with two embryos and a newborn inside her.1

Unlike later ichthyosaurs, Chaohusaurus babies were born head-first. This is different from most modern sea reptiles that give birth tail-first.1

Chaohusaurus was very small, only about as long as a yardstick (0.7 to 1 metre). It weighed as little as a bag of sugar (1.3 to 3.1 kg).1

It had different-shaped teeth in its mouth: sharp ones in the front and round, blunt ones in the back for crushing shells.1

Chaohusaurus lived during the Early Triassic period, about 251 to 247 million years ago, when the first dinosaurs were just starting to appear on land.1

Its fossils were first found in 1972 when workers were building a railway in China.1

For dino experts

Scientific name: Chaohusaurus
Named by: Young and Dong 19723
Group: Ichthyosaurs
Family / clade: Grippiidae3
Classification: Ichthyosauria > Ichthyosauromorpha3
Age of the rocks: 251 to 237 million years ()3
Rock formations: Nanlinghu3
Countries: China3
Fossil records: 9 in the Paleobiology Database3
Also known as: Anhuisaurus (older names now counted as the same animal)3
Discovery: Chaohusaurus was named by Chinese scientists Yang Zhongjian and Dong Zhiming in 1972, based on a partial skeleton found during railway construction near Chaohu Lake, China.1
Still debated: Scientists still debate whether Chaohusaurus is the most primitive ichthyosaur or if it belongs just outside the group Ichthyopterygia.1

Where the facts come from

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