Dino card No. 0495 of 2,027

Dawazisaurus

Say it: dah-WAH-zee-SORE-us

Ate: MeatSea reptilesMiddle TriassicNot technically a dinosaur

Dawazisaurus was a small marine reptile that swam in the seas during the Middle Triassic, about 247 to 241 million years ago. It had a short body and a long tail, and it likely hunted small sea creatures.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

247 to 241 million years ago4

Middle Triassic

Fossils found in

Yunnan Province, China3 2

Food

Meat1

Length

up to 0.5 m1

total length less than 50 cm

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

as long as 3 bananas end to end

How big was Dawazisaurus compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Dawazisaurus was tiny, with a total length of less than 50 centimetres (about 20 inches).1

Its backbone had 20 neck bones, 16 back bones, 4 hip bones, and 37 tail bones.1

It had a pair of large nasal bones that helped form the roof of its snout.3

The back of its skull roof was deeply V-shaped, which is a unique feature.3

It had a fang-like tooth in both its upper jaw and its snout.1

Its front flippers had the finger bone formula 2 to 3-4 to 4-?, meaning the last finger is unknown.1

AI-made picture of Dawazisaurus — An AI-made picture of how Dawazisaurus 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: Dawazisaurus
Named by: Cheng et al. 20164
Group: Sea reptiles
Family / clade: Eosauropterygia4
Classification: Sauropterygia4
Age of the rocks: 247 to 241 million years ()4
Rock formations: Guanling4
Countries: China4
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database4
Discovery: Scientists first described Dawazisaurus in 2016 from a nearly complete skeleton found in the Guanling Formation in Yunnan, China.3 2
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly how Dawazisaurus is related to other sauropterygians, but it seems closer to nothosaurs than to plesiosaurs.3

Where the facts come from

PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
Dawazisaurus (en.wikipedia.org)
Dawazisaurus Brevis , A New Eosauropterygian From the Middle Triassic of Yunnan, China (onlinelibrary.wiley.com)
Dawazisaurus 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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