Portellsaurus

Say it: por-TEL-SORE-us

Name means: “Portell lizard”1

Ate: PlantsBeaked plant-eatersEarly Cretaceous

Portellsaurus was a plant-eating dinosaur that lived in what is now Spain during the Early Cretaceous. It had a beak and walked on two legs, using its teeth to chew tough plants.2 1

Lived

126 to 121 million years ago3

Early Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Portell, Castellón, Spain1

Food

Plants2

Length

6 to 8 m1

estimate based on the size of the jaw bone

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

as long as 8 dogs nose to tailas long as 44 bananas end to end

How big was Portellsaurus compared to YOU?

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

cool stuff

Fun facts

Portellsaurus is known from only one fossil, a nearly complete right lower jaw bone (dentary).1

It lived about 130 to 129 million years ago, during the Barremian stage of the Early Cretaceous.1

Portellsaurus was a styracosternan, a group of beaked, plant-eating dinosaurs that includes Iguanodon.1

Scientists think Portellsaurus was more closely related to the African dinosaur Ouranosaurus than to other Spanish dinosaurs of the same time.1

The fossil was found in a sandstone layer that was once a lagoon or washover environment near the coast.1

Portellsaurus was a medium-to-large dinosaur, estimated to be 6 to 8 metres (20 to 26 feet) long.1

AI-made picture of Portellsaurus — An AI-made picture of how Portellsaurus 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 Portellsaurus

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: Portellsaurus
Named by: Santos-Cubedo et al. 20213
Group: Beaked plant-eaters
Family / clade: Hadrosauroidea3
Classification: Ornithischia > Ornithopoda > Iguanodontia3
Age of the rocks: 126 to 121 million years (Barremian)3
Rock formations: Mirambel3
Countries: Spain3
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: Portellsaurus was named in 2021 by Santos-Cubedo and colleagues. The only fossil, a right lower jaw, was discovered in 1998 by Miquel Guardiola, Julián Yuste and Silvia Fabregat near Portell, Spain.1
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly how Portellsaurus is related to other similar dinosaurs, because only its jaw bone has been found.1

Where the facts come from

A new styracosternan hadrosauroid (Dinosauria: Ornithischia) from the Early Cretaceous of Portell, Spain | PLOS One (journals.plos.org)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
Portellsaurus 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