Keichousaurus Pronunciation

Fun Facts

• ✓A 2004 study published in Nature described a Keichousaurus fossil frozen at the moment of giving birth, making it one of the oldest direct evidence of live birth in a reptile at roughly 245 million years old.
• ✓Male and female Keichousaurus looked noticeably different: males had thicker, broader upper arm bones called humeri, while females were more gracile, and scientists can now reliably tell the sexes apart just from the skeleton.
• ✓Keichousaurus belongs to the same broad group as the giant plesiosaurs that would dominate the seas tens of millions of years later, making it essentially a tiny ancestral cousin of the creatures behind Loch Ness Monster legends.
• ✓Fossils of Keichousaurus are so numerous and so well preserved in Guizhou, China, that complete articulated skeletons are regularly sold in rock and mineral shops around the world, making it one of the most commonly purchased prehistoric reptile fossils by collectors.
• ✓Despite being only about the length of a human hand, Keichousaurus had a neck that made up a surprisingly large proportion of its body length, a feature that foreshadows the dramatically long necks seen in later sauropterygian relatives like Elasmosaurus.