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Romeosaurus

Say it: roh-mee-oh-SORE-us

Name means: “Romeo lizard, named after the character Romeo from William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet, because the fossils were found near Verona, Italy, where the play is set.”1

Ate: MeatMosasaursLate CretaceousNot technically a dinosaur

Romeosaurus was a marine lizard that swam in the warm seas of Italy about 90 million years ago. It was not a dinosaur, but a fierce predator with sharp teeth that hunted fish and other sea creatures.3 1

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 84 million years ago3

Late Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Northern Italy, near Verona, in the 'Lastame' rock layer of the Scaglia Rossa Veneta formation.3 1 2

Food

Meat3

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

cool stuff

Fun facts

Romeosaurus had a forked tip on a bone in its skull called the suprastapedial process of the quadrate, which helped scientists tell it apart from similar mosasaurs.2

Two species of Romeosaurus have been named: Romeosaurus fumanensis and Romeosaurus sorbinii. R. fumanensis is named after the town of Fumane, and R. sorbinii honors the paleontologist Lorenzo Sorbini.1

Scientists have found only five specimens of Romeosaurus, and none of them had well-preserved bones from the neck or tail, so its full body shape is still a mystery.1

Romeosaurus belongs to a group of mosasaurs called Yaguarasaurinae, which also includes Russellosaurus from North America and Yaguarasaurus from South America.2 3

The fossils of Romeosaurus were discovered during quarrying operations in the mountains north of Verona, Italy, in rocks that were once the bottom of a shallow sea.2

AI-made picture of Romeosaurus — An AI-made picture of how Romeosaurus 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: Romeosaurus
Named by: Palci et al. 20133
Group: Mosasaurs
Family / clade: Mosasauridae3
Classification: Mosasauroidea3
Age of the rocks: 94 to 84 million years (Turonian / Santonian)3
Rock formations: Scaglia Rossa Veneta3
Countries: Italy3
Fossil records: 3 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: Romeosaurus was named in 2013 by paleontologists Alessandro Palci, Michael W. Caldwell, and Cesare A. Papazzoni, based on fossils found in northern Italy.3 1
Still debated: Scientists are not sure about the full body shape of Romeosaurus because no complete skeleton has been found, especially the parts behind the skull.1

Where the facts come from

Romeosaurus (en.wikipedia.org)
A new genus and subfamily of mosasaurs from the Upper Cretaceous ...: Ingenta Connect (ingentaconnect.com)
Romeosaurus 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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