Ichthyosaurus Facts for Kids
ICK-thee-oh-SORE-us · its name means “fish lizard”
🌊 Not a dinosaur: a sea reptile that lived at the same time
A fast sea reptile shaped like a dolphin, but not a dinosaur.
- 📏 size: not yet checked long
- ⚖️ weight: not yet checked
- 🕰️ the Jurassic
- 🍽️ fish
Ichthyosaurus swam in the sea. It looked like a dolphin, but it was a reptile. It was not a dinosaur.
Ichthyosaurus had a long, pointed snout, a smooth body, fins, and a tail with a fin at the end. Its eyes were very large. It breathed air, so it came up to the surface, just as dolphins do. It lived in the sea at the same time as the dinosaurs, but it was not one.
Ichthyosaurs were reptiles of the sea, a separate group from the dinosaurs. They looked like dolphins because both are built for fast swimming, even though they are not related. Fossils show that ichthyosaurs gave birth to live babies in the water instead of laying eggs. Mary Anning was only a child when she and her brother found one of the first whole skeletons on the cliffs at Lyme Regis in England.
Every dinosaur number is scientists’ best guess from bones, so each one says where it came from.
How big was Ichthyosaurus?
Ichthyosaurus: no checked size yet, so there is nothing to draw. We only draw what a source says.
Ichthyosaurus in numbers
| Wingspan | no checked number yet |
|---|---|
| Height at the hips | no checked number yet |
| Weight | no checked number yet |
| When it lived | no checked number yet |
| What it ate | fish and squid-like animals |
| Fossils found in | the coast of southern England, especially near Lyme Regis |
| What kind | a sea reptile: it swam in the sea while dinosaurs walked on land, and was not a dinosaur |
Wow!
- It looked like a dolphin, but it was a reptile.
- It gave birth to live babies in the water.
- A child, Mary Anning, helped find one of the first whole skeletons.
🦴 Ichthyosaurus’s bones
Books about Ichthyosaurus, free at the library
Ask a grown-up to tap the button: it shows where to borrow a book about Ichthyosaurus for free.
Where was the land back then?
The continents were in different places when Ichthyosaurus lived, in the Jurassic. Open Planet Earth, pick Drifting continents, and slide back in time to see where the land was.
Its neighbours in time
Where these numbers come from
- Wikidata, Ichthyosaurus (Q131565), checked 30 October 2026.
To read more: the Natural History Museum’s Dino Directory (see also, not copied).