Dino card No. 0462 of 2,027

Cryopterygius

Say it: kry-OP-ter-IJ-ee-us

Name means: “cold or frozen fin”1

Ate: MeatIchthyosaursLate Jurassic to Early CretaceousNot technically a dinosaur

Cryopterygius was a large, fish-shaped marine reptile that lived in the chilly seas near the North Pole during the Late Jurassic. It was an ichthyosaur, not a dinosaur, and its fossil was dug out of permafrost, which is frozen ground.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

149 to 143 million years ago4

Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Spitsbergen, Svalbard, Norway, and also in Poland1 4

Food

Meat1 4

Length

5 to 5.5 m2 3

estimated total length

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

as long as 6 dogs nose to tailas long as 31 bananas end to end

How big was Cryopterygius compared to YOU?

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

cool stuff

Fun facts

The name Cryopterygius means 'cold fin' or 'frozen fin' because it was found in frozen ground in a very cold place.1

Its skeleton was nearly complete and still joined together, which is very rare for an ichthyosaur fossil.1

Cryopterygius had 52 vertebrae in front of its hips, which is a lot for an ichthyosaur.1

Its upper arm bone, the humerus, had only two bumps at the end where it connected to the rest of the fin.1

It lived in the Late Jurassic, about 149 to 143 million years ago, in the cold polar seas.4

Scientists found a complete left hip and leg, which helped them understand how ichthyosaurs moved their hind fins.1

AI-made picture of Cryopterygius — An AI-made picture of how Cryopterygius 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.

Ask Rex about Cryopterygius

Rex only answers questions about this page. 3 questions a day.

Rex is an AI and can make mistakes. He runs on servers in the EU and questions are never saved. Never type your name or other personal things.

For dino experts

Scientific name: Cryopterygius
Named by: Druckenmiller et al. 20124
Group: Ichthyosaurs
Family / clade: Ophthalmosauridae4
Classification: Ichthyosauria > Ichthyosauromorpha4
Age of the rocks: 149 to 143 million years (Tithonian)4
Rock formations: Agardhfjellet, Kcynia4
Countries: Norway, Poland4
Fossil records: 2 in the Paleobiology Database4
Discovery: Cryopterygius was named in 2012 by Patrick Druckenmiller, Jørn Hurum, Espen Knutsen and Hans Nakrem. The nearly complete skeleton was found on the north side of Janusfjellet, near Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway.1

Where the facts come from

Two new ophthalmosaurids (Reptilia: Ichthyosauria) from the Agardhfjellet Formation (Upper Jurassic: Volgian/Tithonian), Svalbard, Norway (njg.geologi.no)
Two new ophthalmosaurids (Reptilia: Ichthyosauria) from the Agardhfjellet Formation (Upper Jurassic: Volgian/Tithonian), Svalbard, Norway (geologi.no)
Cryopterygius (en.wikipedia.org)
Cryopterygius 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.

Rex is hungry! Dino Wiki is a dad's project for his dino-loving son, free with no ads. Grown-ups can feed Rex a snack to help keep it online.Feed Rex