Dino card No. 1302 of 2,027

Odoiporosaurus

Say it: oh-DOY-por-oh-SORE-us

Name means: “traveler lizard”1

Ate: FishSea reptilesMiddle TriassicNot technically a dinosaur

Odoiporosaurus was a small marine reptile that swam in warm, shallow seas during the Middle Triassic, about 239 million years ago. It looked a bit like a modern sea turtle but with a long tail and four flipper-like legs. It lived in what is now northern Italy.1 2

Fun fact: this sea reptile swam while dinosaurs walked on land. Everyone calls them dinos, but they were a different branch of reptiles.

Lived

239 to 237 million years ago4

Middle Triassic

Fossils found in

Besano Formation (Grenzbitumenzone) in northern Italy1 3

Food

Fish1

Length

0.5 to 1 m1

estimated based on related pachypleurosaurs

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 house cats nose to tailas long as 6 bananas end to end

How big was Odoiporosaurus compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Odoiporosaurus is one of the oldest known pachypleurosaurs from the Besano Formation, older than its relative Serpianosaurus.3

Its name means 'traveler lizard' because scientists think its ancestors migrated from the eastern Paleotethys Ocean into the Germanic Basin.1 3

Odoiporosaurus is the sister group to the clade that includes Serpianosaurus and Neusticosaurus.1 3

The only known fossil of Odoiporosaurus was found in the Besano Formation, which is famous for preserving many marine reptiles from the Middle Triassic.1 3

Odoiporosaurus lived during the Anisian stage of the Middle Triassic, about 239 million years ago.1 2

This reptile was a pachypleurosaur, a group of small, long-necked marine reptiles that were not dinosaurs.1

AI-made picture of Odoiporosaurus — An AI-made picture of how Odoiporosaurus 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: Odoiporosaurus
Named by: Renesto et al. 20144
Group: Sea reptiles
Family / clade: Pachypleurosauria4
Classification: Sauropterygia4
Age of the rocks: 239 to 237 million years (Ladinian)4
Rock formations: Meride4
Countries: Italy4
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database4
Discovery: Odoiporosaurus was named and described by Silvio Claudio Renesto, Giorgio Pietro Mario Binelli, and H. Hagdorn in 2014. The fossil was collected from the Besano Formation in northern Italy.1 3
Still debated: Scientists are not sure about the exact diet of Odoiporosaurus, but based on its teeth and relatives, it likely ate fish.1

Where the facts come from

Odoiporosaurus (en.wikipedia.org)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
A new pachypleurosaur from the Middle Triassic Besano formation of Northern Italy (irinsubria.uninsubria.it)
Odoiporosaurus 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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