Australia's Lost Kingdoms

Australia's reptiles, birds and mammals from the Cretaceous to the present

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Woolungasaurus (Woolungasaurus glendowerensis)

Woolungasaurus

Lived: 110 million years ago (early Cretaceous)

Size: Length (head to tail): 9.5m

Description: Woolungasaurus was an elasmosaur (a long-necked type of plesiosaur) that lived in Australia's Eromanga inland sea and ate fish. Its amazing neck was about the same length as its body.

Plesiosaurs are not dinosaurs, but a separate group of aquatic reptiles. There are two kinds of plesiosaurs: the long-necked elasmosaurs such as Woolungasaurus and the short-necked pliosaurs.

Fossils: Fossils of most of the skeleton and skull of Woolungasaurus have been found at Richmond in central Queensland.

Did you know?: Woolungasaurus may have given birth to live young in the water, or it may have lumbered out of the water to lay its eggs on the land, like marine turtles do today.

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