Dino card No. 1040 of 2,027

Leurospondylus

Say it: LOO-ro-SPON-dih-lus

Name means: “smooth vertebra”1

Ate: MeatPlesiosaursLate CretaceousNot technically a dinosaur

Leurospondylus was a plesiosaur, a long-necked marine reptile that lived in the Late Cretaceous period. It swam in rivers and estuaries in what is now Alberta, Canada. Scientists think it may have spent its early life in brackish water.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

72 to 66 million years ago2

Late Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Alberta, Canada (Horseshoe Canyon Formation, Red Deer River)1 2

Food

Meat2

Length

up to 2 m1

estimated for the only known juvenile specimen

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

as long as 4 house cats nose to tailas long as 11 bananas end to end

How big was Leurospondylus compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

The only known fossil of Leurospondylus is a juvenile that was about 2 meters long. Adults may have been much larger.1

Its name means 'smooth vertebra' because its backbone bones were flat and wider than they were long.1

Leurospondylus lived in brackish water (a mix of fresh and salt water) in rivers and estuaries. This is unusual because most plesiosaurs lived in the open ocean.1

When it was first described in 1913, Leurospondylus was thought to be the last known plesiosaur fossil. Its species name 'ultimus' means 'last' in Latin.1

Scientists are not sure which family Leurospondylus belongs to. Its vertebrae look like those of pliosaurs, but its shoulder and hip bones resemble those of elasmosaurids.1

The fossil was found on the east bank of the Red Deer River in Alberta, Canada, in rocks that are about 72 to 66 million years old.2 1

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

Truth: Leurospondylus was a plesiosaur, a marine reptile that lived in the sea and rivers. Plesiosaurs are not dinosaurs.1

For dino experts

Scientific name: Leurospondylus
Named by: Brown 19132
Group: Plesiosaurs
Family / clade: Elasmosauridae2
Classification: Plesiosauria > Elasmosauridae > Sauropterygia2
Age of the rocks: 72 to 66 million years (Maastrichtian)2
Rock formations: Horseshoe Canyon2
Countries: Canada2
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database2
Discovery: Leurospondylus was named by Barnum Brown in 1913 based on a juvenile fossil found in the Horseshoe Canyon Formation of Alberta, Canada.1 2
Still debated: Scientists still debate whether Leurospondylus belongs to the family Elasmosauridae or to a different group, because its bones show a mix of features.1

Where the facts come from

Leurospondylus (en.wikipedia.org)
Leurospondylus 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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