Dino card No. 1268 of 2,027

Nichollssaura

Say it: NICK-olls-SORE-ah

Name means: “Nicholls' lizard”1

Ate: MeatPlesiosaursEarly CretaceousNot technically a dinosaur

Nichollssaura was a small, fast-swimming marine reptile that lived in the ancient seas of North America. It had a long neck, four flippers, and a mouth full of sharp teeth for catching fish.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

113 to 100 million years ago2

Early Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Alberta, Canada1 2

Food

Meat2 1

Length

2.6 to 2.9 m1

based on a complete skeleton

Weight

135 kg1

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

How heavy was it?

as heavy as 4 big dogs

as long as 3 dogs nose to tailas long as 16 bananas end to endas heavy as 27 watermelons

How big was Nichollssaura compared to YOU?

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

cool stuff

Fun facts

Nichollssaura fills a 40-million-year gap in the fossil record of North American plesiosaurs, meaning no plesiosaur fossils from that time were known before its discovery.1

The only known skeleton was accidentally discovered by a 100-ton electric shovel operator in an oilsand mine near Fort McMurray, Alberta, in 1994.1

The fossil is almost complete, missing only a few bones like the left forelimb and some ribs, which were lost when the shovel hit the skeleton.1

Inside the stomach of the Nichollssaura fossil, scientists found 165 gastroliths (stomach stones) made of chert and quartzite, which may have helped it digest food.1

The gastroliths in Nichollssaura are similar to those found in another plesiosaur from the same area, Wapuskanectes, suggesting both animals collected stones from the same ancient beaches.1

Nichollssaura was originally named Nichollsia borealis in 2008, but that name was already used for a type of isopod (a small crustacean), so it was changed to Nichollssaura in 2009.1 2

AI-made picture of Nichollssaura — An AI-made picture of how Nichollssaura 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: Nichollssaura
Named by: Druckenmiller and Russell 20092
Group: Plesiosaurs
Family / clade: Leptocleididae2
Classification: Plesiosauria > Sauropterygia2
Age of the rocks: 113 to 100 million years (Albian)2
Rock formations: Clearwater2
Countries: Canada2
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database2
Discovery: The fossil was discovered in 1994 by shovel operators Greg Fisher and Lorne Cundal in an oilsand mine near Fort McMurray, Alberta. It was named Nichollsia borealis in 2008 by Druckenmiller and Russell, but renamed Nichollssaura borealis in 2009 because the original name was already taken.1 2
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly where Nichollssaura collected its stomach stones, but they think it may have swum westward to gather rocks from the Cadomin Formation, which is 8 to 10 million years older than the plesiosaur itself.1

Where the facts come from

Nichollssaura (en.wikipedia.org)
Nichollssaura 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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