Dino card No. 1315 of 2,027

Ophthalmothule

Say it: off-THAL-mo-THOO-lee

Name means: “eye of the north”1 2

Ate: MeatPlesiosaursLate Jurassic to Early CretaceousNot technically a dinosaur

Ophthalmothule was a plesiosaur, a marine reptile that lived in the sea, not a dinosaur. It had huge eye sockets, so it probably hunted in dark or deep water. This medium-sized swimmer was about as long as a car.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

149 to 137 million years ago4

Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Spitsbergen, Norway (Slottsmøya Member, Agardhfjellet Formation)2 1

Food

Meat2 3

Length

5 to 5.5 m1 2

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

as long as 6 dogs nose to tailas long as 31 bananas end to end

How big was Ophthalmothule compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Ophthalmothule lived right at the end of the Jurassic and start of the Cretaceous, about 149 to 137 million years ago.3

Its name means 'eye of the north' because it had very large eye sockets and was found in the far north.1 2

This plesiosaur is one of the youngest cryptoclidids known from the Boreal region, along with Abyssosaurus.1 2

The holotype specimen includes a nearly complete skull and parts of the body, which is rare for cryptoclidid plesiosaurs.2

Ophthalmothule had a long neck with all its neck bones found still connected, helping scientists study how plesiosaurs moved their necks.2

Its large eyes may have helped it see better in dim light, either in deep water or while hunting at night.1 2

AI-made picture of Ophthalmothule — An AI-made picture of how Ophthalmothule 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: Ophthalmothule
Named by: Roberts et al. 20204
Group: Plesiosaurs
Family / clade: Cryptoclididae4
Classification: Plesiosauria > Sauropterygia4
Age of the rocks: 149 to 137 million years (Tithonian / Berriasian)4
Rock formations: Agardhfjellet4
Countries: Norway4
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database4
Discovery: Ophthalmothule was named in 2020 by Roberts and colleagues. The fossil was dug up in 2012 from Mount Wiman on Spitsbergen, Norway, from rocks that span the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary.2 3
Still debated: Scientists are not sure whether the Ophthalmothule fossil comes from the very end of the Jurassic or the very beginning of the Cretaceous, because the rock layers are very compressed.2

Where the facts come from

Ophthalmothule (en.wikipedia.org)
PeerJ A new plesiosaurian from the Jurassic, Cretaceous transitional interval of the Slottsmøya Member (Volgian), with insights into the cranial anatomy of cryptoclidids using computed tomography (peerj.com)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
Ophthalmothule 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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