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Wahlisaurus

Say it: WAH-lee-SORE-us

Name means: “Wahl's lizard”1

Ate: MeatIchthyosaursEarly JurassicNot technically a dinosaur

Wahlisaurus was a dolphin-like marine reptile that swam in the seas of Early Jurassic England. It had a very long, slender snout and an overbite, like a swordfish. It was not a dinosaur, but a type of ichthyosaur.1 2

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 200 million years ago3

Early Jurassic

Fossils found in

Nottinghamshire, England, UK1 3

Food

Meat3

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

cool stuff

Fun facts

Wahlisaurus had a very unusual shoulder bone called a coracoid, which had a large hole in it. This hole is rarely seen in ichthyosaurs.2

The first Wahlisaurus fossil was discovered by a man named Percy Faulkes, who donated it to a museum when he died in 1951.1

Wahlisaurus is named after two scientists: William Wahl and Judy Massare, who both studied ancient marine reptiles.1

Only two specimens of Wahlisaurus have ever been found. The second one was discovered in 1996 but not identified until 2018.1

Wahlisaurus lived during the Hettangian age, about 201 to 199 million years ago, right after a big extinction event.3

Its snout was extremely slender and delicate, and its lower jaw was shorter than its upper jaw, giving it an overbite.2

AI-made picture of Wahlisaurus — An AI-made picture of how Wahlisaurus 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: Wahlisaurus
Named by: Lomax 20173
Group: Ichthyosaurs
Family / clade: Leptonectidae3
Classification: Ichthyosauria > Ichthyosauromorpha3
Age of the rocks: 201 to 200 million years (Hettangian)3
Rock formations: Scunthorpe Mudstone3
Countries: United Kingdom3
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: Wahlisaurus was named and described by paleontologist Dean Lomax in 2016. The first fossil, a partial skull and skeleton, was found in Nottinghamshire, England, and had been sitting in a museum collection since 1951.1 2
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly how big Wahlisaurus grew, because only incomplete skeletons have been found.1

Where the facts come from

Wahlisaurus (en.wikipedia.org)
A new leptonectid ichthyosaur from the Lower Jurassic (Hettangian) of Nottinghamshire, England, UK, and the taxonomic usefulness of the ichthyosaurian coracoid: Journal of Systematic Palaeontology: Vol 15, No 5 (tandfonline.com)
Wahlisaurus 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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