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ichthyosaur

UK/ˈɪkθiəsɔːɹ/US/ˈɪkθiəsɔːɹ/
nounC1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechToo rare in one of the two pools to compare — fewer than 20 uses in speech or in writing

Other forms: ichthyosaurs

An ichthyosaur is a sea reptile shaped rather like a dolphin. An ichthyosaur fossil, the ichthyosaur's eye, ichthyosaur remains.

It is not a dinosaur, and its resemblance to a dolphin is a textbook case of convergence, since the two are unrelated and arrived at the same shape for the same reason. Some had eyes the size of dinner plates.

Definitions of ichthyosaur

  1. 1nounichthyosaurA sea reptile shaped rather like a dolphin.C1

    “The fossil hunter found a complete ichthyosaur, with its long snout and flippers, in the cliffs.”

ichthyosaur is a reptile.

Where it comes from

From Greek ichthys, a fish, plus sauros, a lizard.

  1. Ancient Greek

    ἰχθύς — fish

  2. Translingual

    Ichthyosaurus

  3. English, today

    ichthyosaur

Translingual Ichthyosaurus, equivalent to Ancient Greek ἰχθύς (“fish”) + Ancient Greek σαῦρος (“lizard”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Dinosaurs & Prehistory

Practise this word

ichthyosaur in the wild

  • Ichthyosauria is an order of large extinct marine reptiles sometimes referred to as "ichthyosaurs", although the term is also used for wider clades in which the order resides.

    Ichthyosauria

  • Ophthalmosaurus is a genus of ichthyosaur known from the Middle-Late Jurassic.

    Ophthalmosaurus

  • Delphinosaurus is a dubious genus of ophthalmosaurid ichthyosaur from Albian-Cenomanian deposits in the Kursk region of European Russia.

    Delphinosaurus

  • Merriam erected Delphinosaurus for the Late Triassic ichthyosaur Shastasaurus perrini from California, but because Delphinosaurus was already in use, the replacement name Californosaurus was erected.

    Delphinosaurus

  • Shastasaurus ("Mount Shasta lizard") is an extinct genus of ichthyosaur from the Late Triassic.

    Shastasaurus

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.