Cymatosaurus

Say it: sy-MAT-oh-SORE-us

Name means: “wave lizard”1

Ate: MeatOther sea reptilesMiddle TriassicNot technically a dinosaur

Cymatosaurus was a marine reptile that swam in the seas during the Triassic Period, long before dinosaurs ruled the land. It was a small to medium-sized predator that probably ate fish and other small sea creatures.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

247 to 237 million years ago3

Middle Triassic

Fossils found in

Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Austria, and France3

Food

Meat1

Length

1 to 1.2 m1

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

as long as 2.5 house cats nose to tailas long as 7 bananas end to end

How big was Cymatosaurus compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Cymatosaurus lived from about 247 to 237 million years ago, during the Early and Middle Triassic.3

It was a pistosauroid, a group of marine reptiles that are close relatives of the long-necked plesiosaurs.3

Several species of Cymatosaurus have been found, including C. fridericianus, C. latifrons, and C. erikae.1

The first fossils of Cymatosaurus were named by German paleontologist Karl Friedrich Fritsch in 1894.3

Cymatosaurus had a moderately flattened skull with a constricted snout and a long postorbital region.2

Its fossils have been found in rocks that were once ancient seabeds, showing it lived in a marine environment.3

AI-made picture of Cymatosaurus — An AI-made picture of how Cymatosaurus 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: Cymatosaurus
Named by: Fritsch 18943
Group: Other sea reptiles
Family / clade: Pistosauroidea3
Classification: Sauropterygia3
Age of the rocks: 247 to 237 million years ()3
Rock formations: Röt, Gogolin, Wellenkalk3
Countries: Poland, Germany, France, Austria, Netherlands3
Fossil records: 16 in the Paleobiology Database3
Also known as: Eurysaurus (older names now counted as the same animal)3
Discovery: Cymatosaurus was named by German paleontologist Karl Friedrich Fritsch in 1894, based on fossils found in Germany.3
Still debated: Scientists are still debating exactly how Cymatosaurus is related to other marine reptiles, with some placing it in the group Pistosauroidea and others in Nothosauria.3

Where the facts come from

Cymatosaurus (en.wikipedia.org)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
Cymatosaurus in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.

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