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Yunguisaurus

Say it: yung-GWEE-SORE-us

Name means: “lizard from the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau”1

Ate: MeatSea reptilesMiddle TriassicNot technically a dinosaur

Yunguisaurus was a long-necked marine reptile that swam in the warm seas of ancient China. It looked a bit like a small plesiosaur, with a slender snout full of sharp teeth for catching fish. Even though it lived in the water, it was not a dinosaur,it was a type of sauropterygian, a cousin of the famous plesiosaurs.1 3

Fun fact: this sea reptile swam while dinosaurs walked on land. Everyone calls them dinos, but they were a different branch of reptiles.

Lived

241 to 237 million years ago3

Middle Triassic

Fossils found in

Guizhou and Yunnan provinces, China, in the Falang and Zhuganpo Formations1 3

Food

Meat1 2

Length

1.7 to 4.2 m1

the holotype skeleton is 1.7 m long, but a larger paratype reached about 4.2 m; total length estimated up to 2.3 m for the holotype

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

as long as 4 dogs nose to tailas long as 23 bananas end to end

How big was Yunguisaurus compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Yunguisaurus had an unusually long neck with 49 vertebrae in its neck, more than most other pistosauroids.2

Its hands had extra finger bones, a condition called hyperphalangy, with a count of 1 to 5-8/9 to 7-4 in the fingers.2

The first fossil of Yunguisaurus was a nearly complete skeleton, missing only the tip of its tail.1

It lived during the Ladinian stage of the Middle Triassic, about 241 to 237 million years ago, when much of China was covered by shallow seas.3

Yunguisaurus had a unique combination of features, including a single opening between its pterygoid bones in the skull and a sharp ridge on top of its head.2

Its ulna bone (one of the lower arm bones) was shaped like an hourglass, which is unusual among reptiles.2

AI-made picture of Yunguisaurus — An AI-made picture of how Yunguisaurus 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: Yunguisaurus
Named by: Cheng et al. 20063
Group: Sea reptiles
Family / clade: Pistosauroidea3
Classification: Sauropterygia3
Age of the rocks: 241 to 237 million years (Ladinian)3
Rock formations: Falang, Zhuganpo3
Countries: China3
Fossil records: 4 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: Yunguisaurus was named in 2006 by a team of scientists including Yen-Nien Cheng, Tamaki Sato, Xiao-Chun Wu, and Chun Li. The first skeleton was found near the Huangnihe River in Guizhou, China, and the species name honors Professor Jinling Li for her work on Triassic marine reptiles.1
Still debated: Scientists are still unsure about the exact lifestyle of Yunguisaurus. Some think it might have been a planktonic suspension feeder, while others believe it was an active predator of fish.3 2

Where the facts come from

Yunguisaurus (en.wikipedia.org)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
Yunguisaurus 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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