Dino card No. 1216 of 2,027

Muiscasaurus

Say it: mwee-SKA-sore-us

Name means: “Muisca lizard (named after the Muisca people of Colombia)”1

Ate: MeatIchthyosaursEarly CretaceousNot technically a dinosaur

Muiscasaurus was a swimming reptile that lived in the ocean during the time of the dinosaurs. It had a sleek body and flippers like a sea turtle. It hunted small, soft animals in the warm Cretaceous seas.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

126 to 113 million years ago4

Early Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Boyacá, Colombia, in the Paja Formation2 1 3

Food

Meat1

Length

3 to 5 m1

the known specimen is a juvenile about 3 m long; adults may have reached 5 m

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

as long as 5 dogs nose to tailas long as 28 bananas end to end

How big was Muiscasaurus compared to YOU?

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

cool stuff

Fun facts

Muiscasaurus had a very narrow skull and long, thin jaws, like a modern dolphin's snout.1

Its teeth were small and smooth, not ridged like those of its relative Kyhytysuka.1

The only known skeleton belongs to a young animal, because its backbone bones were not fully hardened.1

It lived about 125 to 113 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous.2

Muiscasaurus is a type of ichthyosaur called an ophthalmosaurid, related to Ophthalmosaurus.1 3

A well-preserved skull and near-complete spine (68 vertebrae) was found in 2006, giving scientists a much clearer picture of Muiscasaurus.3

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

Truth: It was an ichthyosaur, a marine reptile that swam in the ocean, not a dinosaur. Dinosaurs lived on land.2

For dino experts

Scientific name: Muiscasaurus
Named by: Maxwell et al. 20154
Group: Ichthyosaurs
Family / clade: Ophthalmosauridae4
Classification: Ichthyosauria > Ichthyosauromorpha4
Age of the rocks: 126 to 113 million years (Barremian / Aptian)4
Rock formations: Paja4
Countries: Colombia4
Fossil records: 2 in the Paleobiology Database4
Discovery: The first fossil, a partial skull and skeleton, was described in 2015 and named Muiscasaurus catheti by Maxwell, Dick, Padilla and Parra.2 1
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly how big adult Muiscasaurus grew, because the only known fossils are from a juvenile and a sub-adult.1

Where the facts come from

Muiscasaurus (en.wikipedia.org)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
A benchmark specimen of Muiscasaurus catheti from the upper Aptian of Villa de Leiva, Colombia: New anatomical features and phylogenetic implications (sciencedirect.com)
Muiscasaurus 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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