By exploiting the freedom in the choice of parametrization of a parametric surface, we show that there exist quadratic parametric surfaces that approximate a given parametric surface with the same approximation order as cubics, namely four, in the neighbourhood of a point where the Gaussian curvature of the surface is nonzero. This provides a first generalization to surfaces of earlier work for curves. 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.