Dino card No. 1947 of 2,027

Xiphodracon

Say it: ZY-foh-DRAK-on

Name means: “sword-like dragon”1

Ate: MeatIchthyosaursEarly JurassicNot technically a dinosaur

Xiphodracon was a marine reptile that swam in the Jurassic seas. It had a very long, narrow snout like a sword and big eyes. It is one of the most complete ichthyosaurs ever found from its time.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

193 to 184 million years ago4

Early Jurassic

Fossils found in

Dorset coast, United Kingdom (England)2 1

Food

Meat1

Length

3 m1

estimate for the only known specimen

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

as long as 3 dogs nose to tailas long as 17 bananas end to end

How big was Xiphodracon compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Xiphodracon had a skull 64.2 cm (25.3 inches) long, with a very narrow and pointed snout.1

Its eyes were large and almost filled by a ring of about 17 bony plates called a scleral ring.1

The only known Xiphodracon fossil shows signs of injuries: a broken collarbone, bad teeth, and bone damage from diving problems.1

This individual probably died after being bitten on the head by a larger predator, possibly a Temnodontosaurus up to 9 metres (30 feet) long.1

Xiphodracon is the most complete ichthyosaur skeleton ever found from the Pliensbachian age, about 185 million years ago.1

It is closely related to Hauffiopteryx, and together they form a group called Hauffiopterygia.3

AI-made picture of Xiphodracon — An AI-made picture of how Xiphodracon 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: Xiphodracon
Named by: Lomax et al. 20254
Group: Ichthyosaurs
Family / clade: Leptonectidae4
Classification: Ichthyosauria > Ichthyosauromorpha4
Age of the rocks: 193 to 184 million years (Pliensbachian)4
Rock formations: Charmouth Mudstone4
Countries: United Kingdom4
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database4
Discovery: The fossil was found by Chris Moore in 2001 near Golden Cap on the Jurassic Coast of England. It was named Xiphodracon goldencapensis by Dean Lomax, Judy Massare, and Erin Maxwell in 2025.1
Still debated: Scientists are still debating exactly how Xiphodracon is related to other ichthyosaurs, and whether it represents a new group that appeared during the Pliensbachian.3

Where the facts come from

Xiphodracon (en.wikipedia.org)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
A new long and narrow‐snouted ichthyosaur illuminates a complex faunal turnover during an undersampled Early Jurassic (Pliensbachian) interval - University of Bristol (research-information.bris.ac.uk)
Xiphodracon 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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