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Wunyelfia

Say it: goo-NYEL-fee-ah

Name means: “from Wüñelfe, the Mapuche name for the planet Venus, a symbol of freedom”1

Ate: MeatPlesiosaursLate CretaceousNot technically a dinosaur

Wunyelfia was a long-necked marine reptile that swam in the ocean near Chile about 66 million years ago. It was not a dinosaur, but a plesiosaur, a fierce hunter of the sea.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

72 to 66 million years ago4

Late Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Chile, in the Quiriquina Formation1 3

Food

Meat2

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

cool stuff

Fun facts

Wunyelfia is known from a nearly adult skeleton, including neck bones, back bones, and parts of the shoulders and hips.3

Its neck bones have special features that show it belongs to a group called aristonectines, known for very long necks.3

Wunyelfia lived in the Weddellian Province, a cold ocean region near Antarctica during the Late Cretaceous.3

The name Wunyelfia comes from the Mapuche word for Venus, the planet, and also a symbol of freedom.1

Wunyelfia is the second aristonectine plesiosaur found in the southeastern Pacific from the late Maastrichtian.3

Its fossils are about 72 to 66 million years old, from the very end of the Age of Dinosaurs.2

AI-made picture of Wunyelfia — An AI-made picture of how Wunyelfia 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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Myth buster

Myth: Some people think Wunyelfia was a dinosaur.

Truth: Wunyelfia was a plesiosaur, a marine reptile, not a dinosaur.1

For dino experts

Scientific name: Wunyelfia
Named by: Otero and Soto-Acuña 20214
Group: Plesiosaurs
Family / clade: Elasmosauridae4
Classification: Plesiosauria > Elasmosauridae > Sauropterygia4
Age of the rocks: 72 to 66 million years (Maastrichtian)4
Rock formations: Quiriquina4
Countries: Chile4
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database4
Discovery: Wunyelfia was named by Rodrigo A. Otero and Sergio Soto-Acuña in 2021, based on a partial skeleton found in central Chile.3 1
Still debated: Scientists are still debating exactly how Wunyelfia is related to other aristonectines, because its neck bones are a bit different.3

Where the facts come from

Wunyelfia (en.wikipedia.org)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
Wunyelfia maulensis gen. et sp. nov., a new basal aristonectine (Plesiosauria, Elasmosauridae) from the Upper Cretaceous of central Chile - ADS (ui.adsabs.harvard.edu)
Wunyelfia 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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