Marine reptile
Placodus
It inhabited warm seas of regions that today correspond to central Europe and China.
Placodus lived in shallow seas of the Triassic, before the more famous large marine reptiles of the Jurassic.
Three stages. One companion.
Game artwork
AI-generated, stylized game illustrations. These designs and growth stages are imaginative, not scientific reconstructions.
Placodus at a glance
- Diet
- Mollusks and other hard-shelled prey
- Its broad, flat teeth crushed shells; it was a marine reptile, not a dinosaur.
- When it lived
- Triassic
- Group
- Placodontia
- Placodonts
- Fossil locations
- France, Germany, Poland, China
- Places where fossils have been found
Beyond the game
The real Placodus
It was a marine reptile from the placodont group. It inhabited shallow seas from the Middle Triassic, long before the expansion of large marine reptiles from the Jurassic.
It inhabited warm seas of regions that today correspond to central Europe and China. The record of these animals helps to organize the history of the sea into different chapters. Not all prehistoric aquatic reptiles lived together or belonged to the same family.
This grouping describes evolutionary relationships. Its members share ancestors; they do not form a chain in which one must turn into another.
Fossil discoveries
Selected fossil records · present-day map
Map references
Map: Natural Earth, public domain. Fossil records: linked collections and publications.Sources & text credits
Explore the references behind this profile.
- Placodus
Wikipedia contributors · Spanish source
Educational text adapted and translated from this article by Wikipedia contributors. The revision link, when captured in the source catalogue, identifies the source version.
- Placodus
Wikipedia contributors · English source
Educational text adapted and translated from this article by Wikipedia contributors. The revision link, when captured in the source catalogue, identifies the source version.
- Placodontia
Wikipedia contributors · English source
Educational text adapted and translated from this article by Wikipedia contributors. The revision link, when captured in the source catalogue, identifies the source version.
- Reptiles · extinct branch
Wikipedia contributors · English source
Educational text adapted and translated from this article by Wikipedia contributors. The revision link, when captured in the source catalogue, identifies the source version.
Educational text adapted in English from the existing Wikipedia-backed Dinosgacha catalogue and linked articles by Wikipedia contributors.
Existing English translations have been selected and arranged for this encyclopedia. Repeated period and diet text is omitted where those fields already carry it. Unknown facts remain unfilled; unreviewed geological age phrases are omitted and period labels replace numerical ages.
The adapted educational text is available under CC BY-SA 4.0. This text license does not apply to the game illustrations.