Dino card No. 1313 of 2,027

Opallionectes

Say it: oh-PAL-ee-on-NEK-teez

Name means: “opal swimmer from Andamooka”1

Ate: MeatPlesiosaursEarly CretaceousNot technically a dinosaur

Opallionectes was a plesiosaur, a long-necked marine reptile that swam in the seas near Australia. It had needle-sharp teeth and ate fish and squid. Its bones were turned into opal, a shiny gemstone!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

120 to 113 million years ago3

Early Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Lunatic Hill opal field, Andamooka, South Australia1 2

Food

Meat1 3

Length

5 m1

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

as long as 3 bicycles in a rowas long as 28 bananas end to end

How big was Opallionectes compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Opallionectes lived about 115 million years ago in a cold, possibly freezing sea.1

Its skeleton was found in an opal mine and parts of it turned into opal, a precious gemstone.1

It had fine, needle-like teeth that were flattened side to side, similar to ancient nothosaurs.1

Opallionectes is considered a missing link between older plesiosaurs from 165 million years ago and those from 66 million years ago.1

Scientists think it might have migrated to warmer waters or had a high metabolism to survive the cold.1

AI-made picture of Opallionectes — An AI-made picture of how Opallionectes 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: Opallionectes
Named by: Kear 20063
Group: Plesiosaurs
Family / clade: Plesiosauroidea3
Classification: Plesiosauria > Sauropterygia3
Age of the rocks: 120 to 113 million years (Aptian)3
Rock formations: Bulldog Shale3
Countries: Australia3
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: The species Opallionectes andamookaensis was named by Benjamin P. Kear in 2006, based on a partial opalized skeleton found in an opal mine at Andamooka, South Australia.1 3
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly how Opallionectes adapted to the cold waters it lived in, whether by migrating or by having a higher body temperature.1

Where the facts come from

Opallionectes (en.wikipedia.org)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
Opallionectes 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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