Dino card No. 1927 of 2,027

Wumengosaurus

Say it: WOO-meng-oh-SORE-us

Name means: “Wumeng lizard, named after the Wumeng Mountain area in China”1

Ate: MeatSea reptilesMiddle TriassicNot technically a dinosaur

Wumengosaurus was a small, long-bodied marine reptile that swam in the warm seas of what is now China during the Triassic Period. It had a long snout full of tiny, sharp teeth and probably hunted for small fish and shrimp. Even though it looked a bit like a dinosaur, it was actually a type of sauropterygian, a group that includes plesiosaurs.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

247 to 241 million years ago4

Middle Triassic

Fossils found in

Guizhou Province, southwestern China1 3

Food

Meat1

Length

0.955 to 1.305 m1

total body length

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

as long as 2.5 house cats nose to tailas long as 7 bananas end to end

How big was Wumengosaurus compared to YOU?

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

cool stuff

Fun facts

Wumengosaurus had a very long body with short legs, making it look a bit like a swimming lizard.2

Its jaws were long and pointed, like a pair of tweezers, and held more than 45 tiny teeth.1

Scientists think Wumengosaurus was one of the earliest and most basic members of the eosauropterygian group, which later gave rise to the huge plesiosaurs.1 2

The first fossil of Wumengosaurus was found in the Guanling Formation, a layer of rock that was once the bottom of a shallow sea.1 3

A second species, Wumengosaurus rotundicarpus, was named in 2021 based on a fossil from Panzhou District in Guizhou.1

Wumengosaurus lived about 247 to 241 million years ago, during the Middle Triassic, not long after the biggest mass extinction in Earth's history.1 3

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

Ask Rex about Wumengosaurus

Rex only answers questions about this page. 3 questions a day.

Rex is an AI and can make mistakes. He runs on servers in the EU and questions are never saved. Never type your name or other personal things.

For dino experts

Scientific name: Wumengosaurus
Named by: Jiang et al. 20084
Group: Sea reptiles
Family / clade: Eosauropterygia4
Classification: Sauropterygia4
Age of the rocks: 247 to 241 million years ()4
Rock formations: Guanling4
Countries: China4
Fossil records: 2 in the Paleobiology Database4
Discovery: Wumengosaurus was first described by scientists Jiang, Rieppel, Motani, and others in 2008, based on a fossil skeleton from the Guanling Formation in Guizhou, China.1 3
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly where Wumengosaurus fits on the family tree. Most studies place it as a basal eosauropterygian, but one study suggested it might be more closely related to ichthyosaurs.1

Where the facts come from

Wumengosaurus (en.wikipedia.org)
Ancestral body plan and adaptive radiation of sauropterygian marine reptiles: iScience (cell.com)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
Wumengosaurus 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.

Rex is hungry! Dino Wiki is a dad's project for his dino-loving son, free with no ads. Grown-ups can feed Rex a snack to help keep it online.Feed Rex