Serpianosaurus (meaning "Serpiano lizard") is an extinct genus of pachypleurosaurs known from the Middle Triassic (late Anisian and early Ladinian stages) deposits of Switzerland and Germany. It was a small reptile, with the type specimen of S. mirigiolensis measuring long.
Serpianosaurus (meaning "Serpiano lizard") is an extinct genus of pachypleurosaurs known from the Middle Triassic (late Anisian and early Ladinian stages) deposits of Switzerland and Germany. It was a small reptile, with the type specimen of S. mirigiolensis measuring long.
thumb|200px|left|Serpianosaurus mirigiolensis on display at the Paleontological Institute and of the University of Zurich Fossils of the type species, S. mirigiolensis, have been found from the middle Grenzbitumenzone, the oldest strata of Monte San Giorgio in Switzerland, an area well known for its abundant pachypleurosaur remains. The locality dates back to sometime around the Anisian/Ladinian boundary of the Middle Triassic, around 242 Ma, with Serpianosaurus most likely occurring strictly during the latest Anisian. This makes it one of the oldest sauropterygians from Monte San Giorgio, with only the rare pachypleurosaur Odoiporosaurus being older. Certain aspects of its morphology also suggest it is one of the most basal forms.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).