Dino card No. 0811 of 2,027

Hispaniasaurus

Say it: iss-pan-ee-ah-SORE-us

Name means: “lizard of Spain”1

Ate: MeatSea reptilesMiddle TriassicNot technically a dinosaur

Hispaniasaurus was a strange marine reptile that lived in the shallow seas of Spain about 240 million years ago. It had a long, rectangular skull with no openings on top, and its teeth were big and strong.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

241 to 237 million years ago3

Middle Triassic

Fossils found in

Villora, Cuenca Province, Spain3 1

Food

Meat2

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

cool stuff

Fun facts

Hispaniasaurus is known only from a partial skull, which is very small and rectangular in shape.2

The bones on top of its skull were highly vascularised, meaning they had lots of blood vessels. Scientists think this might have helped it feed in a special way.2

It lived during the Middle Triassic period, about 241 to 237 million years ago, in a shallow marine environment.3 2

The upper temporal openings on its skull might have been closed shut, which is unusual for reptiles.2

Hispaniasaurus belongs to a group called eosauropterygians, which includes nothosaurs and other ancient marine reptiles.3 2

AI-made picture of Hispaniasaurus — An AI-made picture of how Hispaniasaurus 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: Hispaniasaurus
Named by: Marquez-Aliaga et al. 20173
Group: Sea reptiles
Family / clade: Eosauropterygia3
Classification: Sauropterygia3
Age of the rocks: 241 to 237 million years (Ladinian)3
Rock formations: Cañete3
Countries: Spain3
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: Hispaniasaurus was named in 2017 by Ana Marquez-Aliaga and her team. The only fossil found so far is a partial skull from the Cañete Formation in Spain.1 3
Still debated: Scientists are not sure whether the upper temporal openings on its skull were completely closed or located further back, because the fossil is incomplete.2

Where the facts come from

Hispaniasaurus (en.wikipedia.org)
An enigmatic marine reptile, Hispaniasaurus cranioelongatus (gen. et sp. nov.) with nothosauroid affinities from the Ladinian of the Iberian Range (Spain) (exa.ai)
Hispaniasaurus 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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