Dino card No. 0928 of 2,027

Jucha

Say it: YOU-kha

Name means: “named after Jucha, a snake-like demon from local folklore who can take off her head, referring to the missing skull”1 2

Ate: MeatPlesiosaursEarly CretaceousNot technically a dinosaur

Jucha was a long-necked marine reptile that swam in the seas of Early Cretaceous Russia. It was an early elasmosaur, a type of plesiosaur with a very long neck. Jucha is one of the oldest elasmosaurs ever found.1 3

Fun fact: this sea reptile swam while dinosaurs walked on land. Everyone calls them dinos, but they were a different branch of reptiles.

Lived

133 to 126 million years ago3

Early Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Klimovka Formation near Ulyanovsk, European Russia1 3

Food

Meat3

Length

5 m1

estimate for a fully grown adult

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

as long as 3 bicycles in a rowas long as 28 bananas end to end

How big was Jucha compared to YOU?

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

cool stuff

Fun facts

Jucha lived about 130 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous period.1

The only known skeleton of Jucha was discovered in 2007 near the Slantsevy Rudnik village in Russia.1 2

Jucha's neck bones were already getting longer, showing an early step toward the super-long necks of later elasmosaurs.2

The fossil bones were covered in a crust of pyrite, also called fool's gold, which gave the species its name 'squalea' meaning coated.1 2

Jucha lacked some features that later elasmosaurs had, like a heart-shaped hole in the chest bone and a bar across the shoulder blades.2

The name Jucha comes from a Turkic demon that can turn into a dragon and remove its own head, because the fossil skull was missing.1 2

AI-made picture of Jucha — An AI-made picture of how Jucha 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: Jucha
Named by: Fischer et al. 20203
Group: Plesiosaurs
Family / clade: Elasmosauridae3
Classification: Plesiosauria > Elasmosauridae > Sauropterygia3
Age of the rocks: 133 to 126 million years (Hauterivian)3
Rock formations: Klimovka3
Countries: Russia3
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: Jucha was named in 2020 by Fischer and colleagues. The holotype skeleton was found in 2007 by a field crew led by G. N. Uspensky in the Klimovka Formation of European Russia.1 2
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly how the necks of elasmosaurs evolved. Jucha shows an early attempt at neck lengthening, but the pattern of elongation and shortening in different species is still debated.2

Where the facts come from

Jucha (en.wikipedia.org)
Author postprint version (orbi.uliege.be)
Jucha 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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