Dino card No. 1780 of 2,027

Thalassiodracon

Say it: tha-LAS-ee-o-DRAY-kon

Name means: “sea dragon”1

Ate: MeatPlesiosaursEarly JurassicNot technically a dinosaur

Thalassiodracon was a small, fast-swimming marine reptile that lived in the seas around what is now England. It had a short neck, big eyes, and long teeth, and it hunted fish and squid-like animals.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

201 to 184 million years ago2

Early Jurassic

Fossils found in

Somerset, England, United Kingdom1

Food

Meat1

Length

1.5 m1

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

as long as 3 house cats nose to tailas long as 8 bananas end to end

How big was Thalassiodracon compared to YOU?

Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.

cool stuff

Fun facts

Thalassiodracon had a skull only 17 cm (6.7 in) long, but its neck was 75.5 cm (2 ft 5.7 in) long.1

Its eyes were large and had flat scleral rings, which helped it see in dark, deep water.1

Thalassiodracon was warm-blooded, like modern mammals, and had a high metabolism for an active lifestyle.1

It gave birth to live young, not eggs, just like many modern sharks and some reptiles.1

The teeth of Thalassiodracon were constantly replaced in a wave pattern, with every third tooth being replaced at a time.1

Its forelimbs were shorter than its hindlimbs, which scientists think helped it chase prey with speed and strength.1

AI-made picture of Thalassiodracon — An AI-made picture of how Thalassiodracon 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.

you asked

Most asked questions about Thalassiodracon

?How big was Thalassiodracon?

About 1.5 metres (4.9 ft) long. That is roughly the length of a small dolphin.1

?When did Thalassiodracon live?

It lived during the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic periods, about 201 to 196 million years ago.1

?Is Thalassiodracon a dinosaur?

No, it is a plesiosaur, which is a marine reptile. It lived in the sea and was not a dinosaur.1

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Myth buster

Myth: Thalassiodracon was a dinosaur.

Truth: Thalassiodracon was a plesiosaur, a marine reptile that lived in the sea, not a dinosaur.1

For dino experts

Scientific name: Thalassiodracon
Named by: Storrs and Taylor 19962
Group: Plesiosaurs
Family / clade: Pliosauridae2
Classification: Plesiosauria > Pliosauridae > Sauropterygia2
Age of the rocks: 201 to 184 million years (Hettangian / Pliensbachian)2
Rock formations: Blue Lias, White Lias2
Countries: United Kingdom2
Fossil records: 8 in the Paleobiology Database2
Discovery: The first fossils were found by Thomas Hawkins in Somerset, England in the early 1830s. Richard Owen named it Plesiosaurus hawkinsii in 1838, and it was given its own genus Thalassiodracon by Storrs and Taylor in 1996.1
Still debated: Scientists are still debating whether Thalassiodracon was an ancestor of the short-necked pliosaurs or a more primitive plesiosaur.1

Where the facts come from

Thalassiodracon (en.wikipedia.org)
Thalassiodracon 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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