Dino card No. 0767 of 2,027

Gulosaurus

Say it: guh-LOH-sore-us

Name means: “Helm's wolverine lizard”1

Ate: MeatIchthyosaursEarly TriassicNot technically a dinosaur

Gulosaurus was an early ichthyosaur, a marine reptile that lived in the ocean during the Early Triassic. It looked a bit like a dolphin and swam by paddling with its flippers. It was about 1.5 meters long, as long as a bicycle.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 249 million years ago3

Early Triassic

Fossils found in

British Columbia, Canada1

Food

Meat2

Length

1.5 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 3 house cats nose to tailas long as 8 bananas end to end

How big was Gulosaurus compared to YOU?

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

cool stuff

Fun facts

Gulosaurus had five fingers on each flipper, like a human hand, instead of many extra finger bones that later ichthyosaurs had.1

Its name honors the Wolverine Nordic and Mountain Society and Dr. Charles Helm, who helped find fossils near Wapiti Lake.1

Scientists first thought Gulosaurus was either Grippia or Parvinatator, but a skull found in 2013 showed it was a new species.1

Gulosaurus lived about 250 to 248 million years ago, soon after the biggest mass extinction on Earth.2

Its skull had a notch on the first metacarpal bone in the flipper, which was different from its close relative Grippia.1

AI-made picture of Gulosaurus — An AI-made picture of how Gulosaurus 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: Gulosaurus
Named by: Cuthbertson et al. 20133
Group: Ichthyosaurs
Family / clade: Grippidia3
Classification: Ichthyosauromorpha3
Age of the rocks: 251 to 249 million years ()3
Rock formations: Sulphur Mountain3
Countries: Canada3
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: Gulosaurus was named by Robin Cuthbertson, Anthony Russell, and Jason Anderson in 2013. The first fossil was incomplete, but a second half with the skull was found later and showed it was a new species.1
Still debated: Scientists are not sure what the front teeth of Grippia looked like, so they cannot be certain how Gulosaurus's teeth compared.1

Where the facts come from

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