Qianichthyosaurus
genus of reptiles (fossil)
Qianichthyosaurus is an extinct genus of ichthyosaur from the Ladinian and Carnian stages of the Late Triassic epoch. Its fossils have been found in southeastern China, in Carnian rocks of the Falang Formation near Huangtutang, Guizhou. The type species is Qianichthyosaurus zhoui, named by Chun Li in 1999. A second species, Qianichthyosaurus xingyiensis, was named from older (Ladinian) deposits in the Falang Formation in 2013 by Pengfei Yang and colleagues. Complete Qianichthyosaurus fossils are common in the Xiaowa Formation, with both juveniles and pregnant specimens being known; its larger contemporaries, Guizhouichthyosaurus and Guanlingsaurus, are rarer.
Qianichthyosaurus was a small ichthyosaur, with the type species Q. zhoui measuring 1.5–2 m (4.9–6.6 ft) long; Q. xingyiensis was smaller, measuring 1.3 m (4.3 ft) long. Both species had short, pointed snouts, small teeth, and hind flippers that were nearly as long as the front flippers. Between the two species, Q. xingyiensis had a longer snout. Qianichthyosaurus is most similar to Toretocnemus from the Carnian of California, United States. They share the expanded bottom end of their femora and their four-digited flippers with notches on both edges, but Qianichthyosaurus has longer front flippers and differently-shaped ischia.
“Qianichthyosaurus” enters the record as genus of reptiles (fossil). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Qianichthyosaurus, genus and reptiles can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 1, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7267639. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1999 and 2013.
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This entry incorporates text from “Qianichthyosaurus” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.