Dino card No. 1095 of 2,027

Luopingosaurus

Say it: loo-OP-ing-oh-SORE-us

Name means: “Luoping lizard”1

Ate: FishSea reptilesMiddle TriassicNot technically a dinosaur

Luopingosaurus was a small marine reptile that swam in the seas of China about 244 million years ago. It had a long snout and used suction to catch its food. It was not a dinosaur, but a relative of plesiosaurs.2 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

244 to 243 million years ago3

Middle Triassic

Fossils found in

Luoping County, Yunnan Province, China1 2

Food

Fish2

Length

0.64 m2

estimated total length, based on preserved part and tail proportions

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

as long as 4 bananas end to end

How big was Luopingosaurus compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Luopingosaurus had a very long snout, making up 55% of its skull length. This was unusual for its family, which usually had short snouts.2

It had extra finger bones, a condition called hyperphalangy. Its fingers had the formula 2 to 3-5 to 5-3, and its toes had 2 to 3-4 to 6-4.2

Luopingosaurus had 21 neck vertebrae and 27 back vertebrae, which is more than other pachypleurosaurids.2

It had rod-like hyoid bones in its throat. These bones helped create suction to pull prey into its mouth.2

Luopingosaurus lived about 244 million years ago, during the Middle Triassic period. This was about 8 million years after the great end-Permian mass extinction.2

The only known fossil is a nearly complete skeleton, missing only the tip of the tail. It was found in a slab of limestone.2 1

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

Truth: Luopingosaurus was a marine reptile called a pachypleurosaurid, part of the group Sauropterygia. It was not a dinosaur.1 3

For dino experts

Scientific name: Luopingosaurus
Named by: Xu et al. 20233
Group: Sea reptiles
Family / clade: Pachypleurosauridae3
Classification: Sauropterygia3
Age of the rocks: 244 to 243 million years ()3
Rock formations: Guanling3
Countries: China3
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: The fossil was found in Luoping County, Yunnan, China, in rocks of the Guanling Formation. It was named by Xu and colleagues in 2023.1 3
Still debated: Scientists are still debating how Luopingosaurus and other pachypleurosaurids are related to each other and to other marine reptiles. The exact family tree is not fully agreed upon.2

Where the facts come from

Luopingosaurus (en.wikipedia.org)
A new long-snouted marine reptile from the Middle Triassic of China illuminates pachypleurosauroid evolution | Scientific Reports (preview-www.nature.com)
Luopingosaurus 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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