Dino card No. 1626 of 2,027

Serpianosaurus

Say it: ser-pee-an-oh-SORE-us

Name means: “Serpiano lizard”1

Ate: FishSea reptilesMiddle TriassicNot technically a dinosaur

Serpianosaurus was a small, long-tailed marine reptile that swam in warm, shallow seas during the Middle Triassic, about 242 million years ago. It had a big skull and a straight jaw, and it probably ate small sea creatures like shrimp and plankton.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 237 million years ago2

Middle Triassic

Fossils found in

Switzerland and Germany1 2

Food

Fish2

Length

0.75 m1

type specimen of S. mirigiolensis

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 bananas end to end

How big was Serpianosaurus compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Serpianosaurus is one of the oldest sauropterygians from Monte San Giorgio in Switzerland, with only the rare pachypleurosaur Odoiporosaurus being older.1

Males and females looked different: they had differently shaped and sized upper arm bones (humeri). This is called sexual dimorphism.1

Unlike many other pachypleurosaurs, Serpianosaurus did not have thickened ribs (pachyostosis). Its ribs were slender.1

The type species, Serpianosaurus mirigiolensis, was named in 1989 by paleontologist Olivier Rieppel.1 2

A second species, Serpianosaurus germanicus, was named in 2013 from the Karlstadt Formation in Germany, and it is the oldest known record of this genus.1

Serpianosaurus is considered closely related to the genus Neusticosaurus, another small pachypleurosaur.1

AI-made picture of Serpianosaurus — An AI-made picture of how Serpianosaurus 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: Serpianosaurus
Named by: Rieppel 19892
Group: Sea reptiles
Family / clade: Pachypleurosauridae2
Classification: Sauropterygia2
Age of the rocks: 247 to 237 million years ()2
Rock formations: Besano, Karlstadt2
Countries: Switzerland, Germany2
Fossil records: 14 in the Paleobiology Database2
Discovery: Serpianosaurus was named by Olivier Rieppel in 1989 based on fossils from the Grenzbitumenzone of Monte San Giorgio, Switzerland. The type species is Serpianosaurus mirigiolensis.1 2
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly how Serpianosaurus filtered its food, since its teeth and feeding method are not fully understood.2

Where the facts come from

Serpianosaurus (en.wikipedia.org)
Serpianosaurus 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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