Dino card No. 0722 of 2,027

Gladocephaloideus

Say it: GLAD-oh-SEF-uh-LOY-dee-us

Name means: “sword head form”1

Ate: FishFlying reptilesEarly CretaceousNot technically a dinosaur

Gladocephaloideus was a flying reptile that lived about 121 million years ago. It had a long, sword-shaped skull and sharp teeth for catching fish. This pterosaur was one of the first of its family found in Asia.1

Fun fact: pterosaurs flew over the dinosaurs, but they were their cousins, not dinosaurs themselves.

Lived

126 to 120 million years ago4

Early Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Liaoning Province, China1 2

Food

Fish4 1

Wingspan

0.94 m3

largest known specimen, estimated size reliability 3.5/4

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How wide were its wings?

as long as 2 house cats nose to tail

How big was Gladocephaloideus compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Gladocephaloideus had about 50 teeth in total, all with sharp points. The front teeth were longer and pointed forward.1

Its skull was 182 millimeters (7.2 inches) long, and the snout made up about 63 percent of that length.1

A second, nearly complete skeleton was found in 2016. It belonged to a young Gladocephaloideus and showed that the first specimen was also a juvenile.1 2

The fossils were found in the Yixian Formation in China, which is famous for preserving many feathered dinosaurs and early birds.1

Gladocephaloideus had hair-like fibers called pycnofibres on its body, which helped keep it warm.1

Its name means 'sword head form' because of its long, narrow skull.1

AI-made picture of Gladocephaloideus — An AI-made picture of how Gladocephaloideus 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: Gladocephaloideus was a dinosaur.

Truth: Gladocephaloideus was a pterosaur, a flying reptile that is not a dinosaur.1

For dino experts

Scientific name: Gladocephaloideus
Named by: Lü et al. 20124
Group: Flying reptiles
Family / clade: Gallodactylidae4
Classification: Pterosauria > Pterodactyloidea4
Age of the rocks: 126 to 120 million years (Barremian / Aptian)4
Rock formations: Yixian4
Countries: China4
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database4
Discovery: Gladocephaloideus was named in 2012 by Lü Junchang, Ji Qiang, Wei Xuefang, and Liu Yongqing. The first fossil was a skull and partial skeleton found in the Jingangshan area of Liaoning, China.1
Still debated: Scientists are still debating whether Gladocephaloideus belongs to the Gallodactylidae or the Ctenochasmatidae family.1

Where the facts come from

Gladocephaloideus (en.wikipedia.org)
New Material of the Pterosaur Gladocephaloideus Lü et al., 2012 from the Early Cretaceous of Liaoning Province, China, with Comments on Its Systematic Position (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
Gladocephaloideus jingangshanensis | Pterosaur Database by DinoAnimals.com (dinoanimals.com)
Gladocephaloideus 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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