Dino card No. 1043 of 2,027

Leyesaurus

Say it: LAY-eh-SORE-us

Name means: “Leyes' lizard, named after the Leyes family who owned the land where it was found”1

Ate: PlantsLong-necksEarly Jurassic

Leyesaurus was a long-necked dinosaur that lived in what is now Argentina. It walked on two legs and used its long neck to reach leaves high up in trees.1

Lived

201 to 175 million years ago5

Early Jurassic

Fossils found in

Quebrada del Barro Formation, northwestern Argentina1

Food

Plants2

Length

2.5 m3 4

estimate

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

as long as 2.5 dogs nose to tailas long as 14 bananas end to end

How big was Leyesaurus compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Leyesaurus had an extremely long neck for its time. Its sixth neck bone was more than five times longer than it was tall, which is unique among early sauropodomorphs.1

This dinosaur is a member of the Massospondylidae family, which were plant-eating dinosaurs that spread across many continents.1

Leyesaurus lived during the Early Jurassic Period, about 201 to 174 million years ago.2

The only known skeleton of Leyesaurus is partially articulated, meaning many bones were still connected when found.1

Leyesaurus had a sharply angled snout, with its upper jaw bone rising at a 50-degree angle.1

AI-made picture of Leyesaurus — An AI-made picture of how Leyesaurus 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: Leyesaurus
Named by: Apaldetti et al. 20115
Group: Long-necks
Family / clade: Massospondylidae5
Classification: Sauropodomorpha5
Age of the rocks: 201 to 175 million years (Hettangian / Toarcian)5
Countries: Argentina5
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database5
Discovery: Leyesaurus was named in 2011 by Cecilia Apaldetti and colleagues. The fossils were found in the Quebrada del Barro Formation in San Juan Province, Argentina.1
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly how big Leyesaurus grew, because only a partial skeleton has been found.1

Where the facts come from

A New Basal Sauropodomorph (Dinosauria: Saurischia) (journals.plos.org)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
A New Basal Sauropodomorph (Dinosauria: Saurischia) from Quebrada del Barro Formation (Marayes-El Carrizal Basin), Northwestern Argentina | PLOS One (journals.plos.org)
Leyesaurus (en.wikipedia.org)
Leyesaurus 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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