Dino card No. 1703 of 2,027

Spitrasaurus

Say it: SPIT-rah-SORE-us

Name means: “Spitsbergen Travel lizard, after the travel company Spitra that supported the research”1

Ate: MeatPlesiosaursLate Jurassic to Early CretaceousNot technically a dinosaur

Spitrasaurus was a long-necked marine reptile that swam in the Jurassic seas. It had an incredibly long neck with at least 60 vertebrae, more than most other plesiosaurs. It lived in the cold waters near what is now Svalbard, Norway.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

149 to 143 million years ago2

Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Janusfjellet, Spitsbergen, Svalbard, Norway1

Food

Meat2

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

cool stuff

Fun facts

Spitrasaurus had at least 60 neck bones (cervical vertebrae), which is more than most other Jurassic plesiosaurs. Only some Cretaceous elasmosaurids had more.1

The neck bones of Spitrasaurus had a prominent ridge on the side, a feature not seen in many related plesiosaurs like Djupedalia or Kimmerosaurus.1

Two species of Spitrasaurus have been named: S. wensaasi and S. larseni. They differ in the shape of their neck bones and ribs.1

The first specimen of Spitrasaurus (S. wensaasi) was a juvenile, because its vertebrae were not fully fused. It was preserved lying on its back in black mudstone.1

Spitrasaurus lived about 149 to 143 million years ago, during the Tithonian stage of the Jurassic period. Its fossils were found in the Slottsmøya Member of the Agardhfjellet Formation.2 1

The name Spitrasaurus honors Spitsbergen Travel, a local travel company that helped support the research.1

AI-made picture of Spitrasaurus — An AI-made picture of how Spitrasaurus 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: Spitrasaurus
Named by: Knutsen et al. 20122
Group: Plesiosaurs
Family / clade: Cryptoclididae2
Classification: Plesiosauria > Sauropterygia2
Age of the rocks: 149 to 143 million years (Tithonian)2
Rock formations: Agardhfjellet2
Countries: Norway2
Fossil records: 2 in the Paleobiology Database2
Discovery: Spitrasaurus was named in 2012 by Espen Knutsen, Patrick Druckenmiller, and Jørn Hurum. The fossils were found on the north slope of Janusfjellet mountain on Spitsbergen, Svalbard, Norway.2 1
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly how long Spitrasaurus was, because no complete skeleton has been found. The known specimens are missing parts of the tail and skull.1

Where the facts come from

Two new species of long-necked plesiosaurians (Reptilia: Sauropterygia) from the Upper Jurassic (Middle Volgian) Agardhfjellet Formation of central Spitsbergen (geologi.no)
Spitrasaurus 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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