Dino card No. 1660 of 2,027

Simbirskiasaurus

Say it: sim-BIR-skee-ah-SORE-us

Name means: “Simbirsk lizard”1

Ate: MeatIchthyosaursEarly CretaceousNot technically a dinosaur

Simbirskiasaurus was a fast-swimming marine reptile that lived in the Early Cretaceous seas. It had a long snout and sharp teeth for catching fish and squid. This ichthyosaur was not a dinosaur, but a reptile that breathed air like a dolphin.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

126 to 121 million years ago3

Early Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Right bank of the Volga River, 25 km upstream from Ulyanovsk, Ulyanovsk Oblast, Russia3 1

Food

Meat3

Length

4 to 5 m1

estimated from fragmentary skull and vertebrae

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

as long as 5 dogs nose to tailas long as 28 bananas end to end

How big was Simbirskiasaurus compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Simbirskiasaurus had a divided nostril opening, with a bony pillar separating it into two parts. This is a rare feature among ichthyosaurs.1

Its skull bones show deep interlocking joints between the prefrontal and lacrimal bones, similar to the much older ichthyosaur Temnodontosaurus.1

The only known fossil is a partial skull and backbone, found in clay from the Simbirskites Clay formation.1 3

Scientists once thought Simbirskiasaurus was a doubtful name, but a 2014 study confirmed it is a valid genus of platypterygiine ichthyosaur.2

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

Simbirskiasaurus belongs to the group Platypterygiinae, which includes some of the last ichthyosaurs before they went extinct.1 3

AI-made picture of Simbirskiasaurus — An AI-made picture of how Simbirskiasaurus 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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Myth buster

Myth: Simbirskiasaurus is a dinosaur.

Truth: Simbirskiasaurus is an ichthyosaur, a marine reptile that lived in the ocean and was not a dinosaur.1

For dino experts

Scientific name: Simbirskiasaurus
Named by: Otschev and Efimov 19853
Group: Ichthyosaurs
Family / clade: Ophthalmosauridae3
Classification: Ichthyosauria > Ichthyosauromorpha3
Age of the rocks: 126 to 121 million years (Barremian)3
Rock formations: Simbirskites Clay3
Countries: Russia3
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: Simbirskiasaurus was named by Russian paleontologists V. G. Otschev and V. M. Efimov in 1985, based on a fragmentary skull and backbone found near the Volga River in Russia.3 1
Still debated: Scientists are not sure about the exact size of Simbirskiasaurus because only a partial skull and backbone have been found.1

Where the facts come from

Simbirskiasaurus (en.wikipedia.org)
Simbirskiasaurus and Pervushovisaurus reassessed: implications for the taxonomy and cranial osteology of Cretaceous platypterygiine ichthyosaurs - Fischer - 2014 - Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society - Wiley Online Library (onlinelibrary.wiley.com)
Simbirskiasaurus 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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