Dino card No. 1379 of 2,027

Pararcus

Say it: PAIR-ar-kus

Name means: “pair arch”1

Ate: FishSea reptilesMiddle TriassicNot technically a dinosaur

Pararcus was a marine reptile that lived in the shallow seas of the Netherlands about 245 million years ago. It had a flat body and strong, paddle-like limbs for swimming. Unlike many other placodonts, it did not have a heavy shell on its back.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

247 to 241 million years ago2

Middle Triassic

Fossils found in

Winterswijk quarry, the Netherlands2 1

Food

Fish1

Length

1.35 m1

estimate based on the holotype, which was not fully grown

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

as long as 2.5 house cats nose to tailas long as 8 bananas end to end

How big was Pararcus compared to YOU?

Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.

cool stuff

Fun facts

Pararcus had a special backbone where the neural arches (the parts that protect the spinal cord) were not fused together, even in adults. This is called paedomorphosis and is common in animals that live in the sea.1

Its hip bones (pubis and ischium) were flat and plate-like, which helped it swim efficiently.1

The only known fossil of Pararcus was found by a fossil collector named Gerben Diepenbroek, and the species is named after him.1

Pararcus lived during the Middle Triassic period, about 247 to 241 million years ago, when the Netherlands was covered by a shallow sea.2

Unlike some other placodonts that had heavy armour plates, Pararcus only had a few small, unfused armour plates scattered in its skin.1

The vertebrae of Pararcus were deeply hollowed out on both ends (amphicoelous) and still had a notochord, a flexible rod that runs through the spine.1

AI-made picture of Pararcus — An AI-made picture of how Pararcus 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: Pararcus
Named by: Klein and Scheyer 20142
Group: Sea reptiles
Family / clade: Placodontia2
Classification: Placodontia > Sauropterygia2
Age of the rocks: 247 to 241 million years ()2
Rock formations: Vossenveld2
Countries: Netherlands2
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database2
Discovery: Pararcus was named in 2014 by Nicole Klein and Torsten Scheyer. The only fossil was found by Gerben Diepenbroek in a quarry near Winterswijk, the Netherlands.2 1
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly how Pararcus swam. Its flexible backbone and flat hip bones suggest it might have moved differently from other placodonts.1

Where the facts come from

Klein_20120147.indd (zora.uzh.ch)
Pararcus 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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