Dino card No. 1524 of 2,027

Quasianosteosaurus

Say it: KWAY-zee-an-oh-stee-oh-SORE-us

Name means: “almost boneless lizard”1

Ate: MeatIchthyosaursEarly Triassic to Middle TriassicNot technically a dinosaur

Quasianosteosaurus was an ancient marine reptile that swam in the seas long before dinosaurs ruled the land. It had a huge skull, almost 50 centimetres long, making it one of the biggest early ichthyosaurs known.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

249 to 247 million years ago4

Early Triassic to Middle Triassic

Fossils found in

Mount Viking, Spitsbergen, Svalbard archipelago, Norway1

Food

Meat3

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

cool stuff

Fun facts

Quasianosteosaurus is known from only one partial skull, which is mostly a natural cast with very little original bone left.1

Its name means 'almost boneless lizard' because the fossil skull is almost just an impression in the rock.1

This ichthyosaur lived about 248 to 247 million years ago, during the Early Triassic period.3

The skull of Quasianosteosaurus is the largest Early Triassic ichthyosaur skull ever found, measuring about 50 centimetres (20 inches) long.1 2

It was a close relative of other early ichthyosaurs like Parvinatator, but different enough to be placed in its own family, Quasianosteosauridae.1 2

The fossil was found in the Sticky Keep Formation on Mount Viking in Spitsbergen, Norway.1

Early Triassic ichthyosaurs like Quasianosteosaurus show that these marine reptiles evolved and diversified very quickly after the great Permian extinction.2

AI-made picture of Quasianosteosaurus — An AI-made picture of how Quasianosteosaurus 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: Quasianosteosaurus
Named by: Maisch and Matzke 20034
Group: Ichthyosaurs
Family / clade: Quasianosteosauridae4
Classification: Ichthyosauria > Ichthyosauromorpha4
Age of the rocks: 249 to 247 million years ()4
Rock formations: Sticky Keep4
Countries: Svalbard4
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database4
Discovery: Quasianosteosaurus was named by Michael Werner Maisch and Andreas Theodor Matzke in 2003, based on a partial skull found on Mount Viking in Spitsbergen, Norway.1
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly how big the whole animal was, because only its skull has been found.1

Where the facts come from

Quasianosteosaurus (en.wikipedia.org)
Observations on Triassic ichthyosaurs. Part XII. A new Early Triassic ichthyosaur genus from Spitzbergen - Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie - Abhandlungen Band 229 Heft 3, Schweizerbart science publishers (schweizerbart.de)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
Quasianosteosaurus 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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