Dino card No. 1351 of 2,027

Palmula

Say it: pal-MYOO-luh

Name means: “blade of an oar”1

Ate: MeatPlesiosaursLate CretaceousNot technically a dinosaur

Palmula was a small, fast-swimming marine reptile that lived in the shallow seas of North America about 90 million years ago. It had four flippers shaped like oars and a short neck, making it a speedy hunter of fish and squid.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

94 to 90 million years ago2

Late Cretaceous

Food

Meat2 1

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

cool stuff

Fun facts

Palmula was a polycotylid plesiosaur, a group of short-necked plesiosaurs that were fast swimmers.1

Its name means 'blade of an oar' because its flipper bones were shaped like square paddles.1

The bones in its flippers were nearly square, unlike other plesiosaurs which had short, wide flipper bones.1

Palmula lived during the early Turonian stage, about 93 to 90 million years ago.2 1

Only one fossil of Palmula has been found, including parts of the skull, backbone, and a complete right flipper.1

Palmula was originally named Palmula, but that name was already used for a different animal, so scientists later changed it to Palmulasaurus.2

AI-made picture of Palmula — An AI-made picture of how Palmula 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.

Ask Rex about Palmula

Rex only answers questions about this page. 3 questions a day.

Rex is an AI and can make mistakes. He runs on servers in the EU and questions are never saved. Never type your name or other personal things.

For dino experts

Scientific name: Palmula
Named by: Albright et al. 20072
Group: Plesiosaurs
Family / clade: Polycotylidae2
Classification: Plesiosauria > Sauropterygia2
Age of the rocks: 94 to 90 million years (Turonian)2
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database2
Discovery: Palmula was named in 2007 by L. Barry Albright III, David D. Gillette, and Alan L. Titus based on a fossil found in the Tropic Shale of southern Utah.2 1
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly how big Palmula grew, because only one partial skeleton has been found.1

Where the facts come from

doc.rero.ch (doc.rero.ch)
Palmula 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.

Rex is hungry! Dino Wiki is a dad's project for his dino-loving son, free with no ads. Grown-ups can feed Rex a snack to help keep it online.Feed Rex