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Marmornectes

Say it: MAR-mor-NEK-teez

Name means: “marble swimmer”1

Ate: MeatPlesiosaursMiddle JurassicNot technically a dinosaur

Marmornectes was a plesiosaur that lived in the sea during the time of the dinosaurs. It had a long snout and a slender body, and it swam through the water hunting for fish and other prey.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

165 to 162 million years ago4

Middle Jurassic

Fossils found in

United Kingdom (England), in the Oxford Clay Formation2 1

Food

Meat2 3

Top speed

about 27 km/h (17 mph)

Swimming, estimate

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How fast was it?

A person walking about 5 km/h (3 mph)

A kid on a bike about 22 km/h (14 mph)

Marmornectes about 27 km/h (17 mph)

A galloping horse about 65 km/h (40 mph)

A cheetah about 100 km/h (62 mph)

cool stuff

Fun facts

Marmornectes lived about 165 to 161 million years ago, during the Middle Jurassic period.2

Its fossils were found in a clay pit in Bedfordshire, England.1

Marmornectes had a long, slender snout, which scientists call a longirostrine snout.1

It was one of the earliest pliosaurids from the Middle Jurassic, and it was more lightly built than later pliosaurids.1

Marmornectes gave birth to live young, like many other marine reptiles.2 3

AI-made picture of Marmornectes — An AI-made picture of how Marmornectes 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: Marmornectes
Named by: Ketchum and Benson 20114
Group: Plesiosaurs
Family / clade: Pliosauridae4
Classification: Plesiosauria > Pliosauridae > Sauropterygia4
Age of the rocks: 165 to 162 million years (Callovian)4
Rock formations: Oxford Clay4
Countries: United Kingdom4
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database4
Discovery: Marmornectes was named by Hilary F. Ketchum and R. B. J. Benson in 2011 based on a partial skeleton from the Oxford Clay Formation of England.2 1

Where the facts come from

A new pliosaurid (Sauropterygia, Plesiosauria) from the Oxford Clay Formation (Middle Jurassic, Callovian) of England: evidence for a gracile, longirostrine grade of Early-Middle Jurassic pliosaurids - ESC Publications (web.archive.org)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
Marmornectes candrewi Ketchum & Benson 2011 - Encyclopedia of Life (eol.org)
Marmornectes 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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