Dino card No. 1999 of 2,027

Yuzhoupliosaurus

Say it: yoo-ZHOO-plee-oh-SORE-us

Name means: “Yuzhou lizard”1

Ate: MeatPlesiosaursMiddle JurassicNot technically a dinosaur

Yuzhoupliosaurus was a plesiosaur, a long-necked marine reptile that lived in the Middle Jurassic period. It swam in the waters of what is now China, and it was a meat-eater that caught fish and other prey with its sharp teeth.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

175 to 162 million years ago3

Middle Jurassic

Fossils found in

Chongqing, China1 2

Food

Meat1 2

Length

4 m1

estimated

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 22 bananas end to end

How big was Yuzhoupliosaurus compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Yuzhoupliosaurus is known only from a lower jaw, eighteen vertebrae, parts of a shoulder girdle, and pieces of the right hindlimb.1

Its neck bones (cervical vertebrae) are described as 'high and short', and the front neck ribs are double-headed while the back ones are single-headed.1

The name Yuzhoupliosaurus comes from Yuzhou, an old name for the city of Chongqing in China, where the first fossil was found.1

Scientists think Yuzhoupliosaurus lived in fresh water, which is unusual for plesiosaurs that mostly lived in the sea.1

It lived during the Middle Jurassic, about 174 to 161 million years ago.2

Yuzhoupliosaurus had long, well-developed collarbones (clavicles) and elongated coracoids (part of the shoulder blade).1

AI-made picture of Yuzhoupliosaurus — An AI-made picture of how Yuzhoupliosaurus 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: Yuzhoupliosaurus
Named by: Zhang 19853
Group: Plesiosaurs
Family / clade: Rhomaleosauridae3
Classification: Plesiosauria > Sauropterygia3
Age of the rocks: 175 to 162 million years (Aalenian / Callovian)3
Countries: China3
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: Yuzhoupliosaurus was named by Chinese paleontologist Zhang in 1985, based on a partial skeleton found in Chongqing, China.1 2
Still debated: Scientists are not sure whether Yuzhoupliosaurus lived in fresh water or salt water, because the fossil was found in rocks that could be from a river or lake.1

Where the facts come from

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