Dino card No. 1895 of 2,027

Vinialesaurus

Say it: vin-ee-ah-LAY-sore-us

Name means: “Viñales lizard, after the town in Cuba where it was found”1

Ate: MeatPlesiosaursLate JurassicNot technically a dinosaur

Vinialesaurus was a plesiosaur, a long-necked marine reptile that swam in warm seas during the Jurassic Period. It had a short skull with big eyes and nostrils, and it used its sharp teeth to catch fish and other sea creatures.4 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

159 to 155 million years ago4

Late Jurassic

Fossils found in

Jagua Formation, Pinar del Río, Cuba1 4

Food

Meat4

Length

3 to 4 m1

estimated based on related cryptoclidids

Weight

250 kg3

estimate

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

How heavy was it?

as heavy as 8 big dogs

as long as 4 dogs nose to tailas long as 22 bananas end to endas heavy as 50 watermelons

How big was Vinialesaurus compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Vinialesaurus is only known from a partial skull, lower jaws, and the first two neck bones.1

It had double internal nostrils, a feature that helps tell it apart from other plesiosaurs.2

The fossil was first described in 1949 as a subspecies of Cryptocleidus, but later scientists decided it was a new genus.1

Vinialesaurus lived about 161 to 156 million years ago, during the Oxfordian age of the Late Jurassic.4

It shared its ocean with pliosauroids, ichthyosaurs, crocodilians, and sea turtles.2

The name honors the town of Viñales in western Cuba, where the only known specimen was discovered.1

AI-made picture of Vinialesaurus — An AI-made picture of how Vinialesaurus 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: Vinialesaurus
Named by: Gasparini et al. 20024
Group: Plesiosaurs
Family / clade: Cryptoclididae4
Classification: Plesiosauria > Sauropterygia4
Age of the rocks: 159 to 155 million years (Oxfordian)4
Rock formations: Jagua4
Countries: Cuba4
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database4
Discovery: The first fossil was found in the Jagua Formation of Cuba and described by Ricardo De la Torre and Luis Rojas in 1949 as Cryptocleidus? cuervoi caroli. In 2002, Zulma Gasparini and colleagues redescribed it and gave it the new genus name Vinialesaurus.1 4
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly how big Vinialesaurus grew, because only the front part of the skull and neck are known.1

Where the facts come from

Vinialesaurus (en.wikipedia.org)
New plesiosaur from Cuba: Vinialesaurus (dml.reptilis.net)
Vinialesaurus (kaweah.freedombox.rocks)
Vinialesaurus 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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