Chaohusaurus

Chaohusaurus gave birth to live babies in the water, not eggs on land. One fossil shows a mother with two embryos and a newborn inside her.1

Unlike later ichthyosaurs, Chaohusaurus babies were born head-first. This is different from most modern sea reptiles that give birth tail-first.1

Chaohusaurus was very small, only about as long as a yardstick (0.7 to 1 metre). It weighed as little as a bag of sugar (1.3 to 3.1 kg).1

It had different-shaped teeth in its mouth: sharp ones in the front and round, blunt ones in the back for crushing shells.1

Chaohusaurus lived during the Early Triassic period, about 251 to 247 million years ago, when the first dinosaurs were just starting to appear on land.1

Its fossils were first found in 1972 when workers were building a railway in China.1