Dino card No. 1733 of 2,027

Sveltonectes

Say it: svel-toe-NEK-tees

Name means: “agile swimmer”1

Ate: MeatIchthyosaursEarly CretaceousNot technically a dinosaur

Sveltonectes was a speedy marine reptile that lived in the ocean during the time of the dinosaurs. It had a sleek body and sharp, tiny teeth for catching fish and squid.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

Ulyanovsk region, western Russia3 1

Food

Meat3 2

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

cool stuff

Fun facts

The name Sveltonectes means 'agile swimmer' in Greek, because it was small and built for speed in the water.1

Its scientific name Sveltonectes insolitus means 'unusual agile swimmer', because its teeth and bones are very different from other ichthyosaurs.1

Sveltonectes had small, sharp teeth, unlike most other Cretaceous ichthyosaurs that had bigger, blunter teeth.2

Its closest relative is another ichthyosaur called Aegirosaurus.1

The only known fossil of Sveltonectes was found in rocks that are about 126 million years old, from the Early Cretaceous period.1

Scientists think Sveltonectes was a fast swimmer because it had strong muscles around its flippers and a streamlined skull.1

AI-made picture of Sveltonectes — An AI-made picture of how Sveltonectes 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: Sveltonectes
Named by: Fischer et al. 20113
Group: Ichthyosaurs
Family / clade: Ophthalmosauridae3
Classification: Ichthyosauria > Ichthyosauromorpha3
Age of the rocks: 126 to 121 million years (Barremian)3
Countries: Russia3
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: Sveltonectes was named in 2011 by Valentin Fischer, Edwige Masure, Maxim S. Arkhangelsky, and Pascal Godefroit, based on a nearly complete skeleton found in western Russia.1 3

Where the facts come from

Sveltonectes (en.wikipedia.org)
ORBi: Detailled Reference (web.archive.org)
Sveltonectes 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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