Dino card No. 1352 of 2,027

Palmulasaurus

Say it: pal-myoo-LAY-sore-us

Name means: “little palm lizard”1

Ate: MeatPlesiosaursLate CretaceousNot technically a dinosaur

Palmulasaurus was a fast-swimming marine reptile that lived in the warm seas of Utah about 93 million years ago. It had a long neck and four flippers to paddle through the water. Even though it looked like a dinosaur, it was actually a plesiosaur, a different kind of ancient reptile.1 3

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 ago3

Late Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Utah, USA3 1

Food

Meat3 2

Length

3 to 4 m1

estimated

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

as long as 4 dogs nose to tailas long as 22 bananas end to end

How big was Palmulasaurus compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Palmulasaurus was first called Palmula, but that name was already used for a tiny fossil shell. Scientists had to give it a new name.1

It lived during the Turonian stage, about 94 to 89 million years ago.1 3

Palmulasaurus belonged to a group of plesiosaurs called polycotylids, which had short necks and were fast swimmers.1

Its fossils were found in the Tropic Shale in Utah, which was once a warm, shallow sea.1 3

Palmulasaurus gave birth to live young, not eggs, like many other marine reptiles.2

AI-made picture of Palmulasaurus — An AI-made picture of how Palmulasaurus 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: Palmulasaurus
Named by: Albright et al. 20073
Group: Plesiosaurs
Family / clade: Polycotylidae3
Classification: Plesiosauria > Sauropterygia3
Age of the rocks: 94 to 90 million years (Turonian)3
Rock formations: Tropic Shale3
Countries: USA3
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: Palmulasaurus was named by L. B. Albright, D. D. Gillette, and A. L. Titus in 2007. They originally called it Palmula, but that name was already taken by a foraminiferan, so they changed it to Palmulasaurus.1 3
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly how big Palmulasaurus grew, because only a few fossils have been found.1

Where the facts come from

Palmulasaurus (en.wikipedia.org)
Palmulasaurus quadratus - Encyclopedia of Life (eol.org)
Palmulasaurus 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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