Eretmosaurus
Eretmosaurus Temporal range: Early Jurassic,
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Neotype specimen of E. rugosus | |
Scientific classification ![]() | |
Domain: | Eukaryota |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Chordata |
Class: | Reptilia |
Superorder: | †Sauropterygia |
Order: | †Plesiosauria |
Family: | †Microcleididae |
Genus: | †Eretmosaurus Seeley, 1874 |
Type species | |
†Eretmosaurus rugosus Seeley, 1874
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Synonyms | |
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Eretmosaurus is an extinct genus of plesiosaur from the Early Jurassic Blue Lias of England.[1] Only the type species is known, which is E. rugosus.[2]
History
[edit]![](http://178.128.105.246/content-http-upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/Eretmosaurus.jpg/220px-Eretmosaurus.jpg)
![](http://178.128.105.246/content-http-upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cc/Eretmosaurus_rugosus.png/220px-Eretmosaurus_rugosus.png)
The holotype consists of several vertebrae that were discovered in the Blue Lias in Gloucestershire. Owen (1840) was the first to describe the specimen, which was assigned to Plesiosaurus rugosus.[3]
Later, Owen (1865) described a headless skeleton discovered in the Ammonites stellaris zone of the Blue Lias at Granby, Nottinghamshire (NHMUK 14435) that he assigned to P. rugosus,[4] and Seeley used NHMUK 14435 as the basis for describing and naming Eretmosaurus rugosus in 1874.[2]
A petition was filed with the ICZN over the holotype by Brown and Bardet (1994),[1] and NHMUK 14435 was allocated as the official neotype in 1996.[5]
Benton and Spencer (1995) mentioned a second species of Eretmosaurus: E. macropterus; they rectified this mistake within the same paper by mentioning on page 116 that E. macropterus actually belongs to Microcleidus.[6]
Classification
[edit]Eretmosaurus was classified into Rhomaleosauridae by Persson (1963),[7] then into Pliosauridae by Brown (1981),[8] then into Elasmosauridae by Bardet (1995)[9] and Bardet et al. (1999),[10] and most recently into Microcleididae by Benson et al. (2012).[11]
See also
[edit]- List of plesiosaur genera
- Timeline of plesiosaur research
- Jurassic plesiosaurs of Europe
- List of plesiosaurs
References
[edit]- ^ a b David S. Brown and Nathalie Bardet (1994). Plesiosaurus rugosus Owen, 1840 (currently Eretmosaurus rugosus, Reptilia, Plesiosauria) proposed designation of a neotype. Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature 51(3)
- ^ a b Seeley, H. G., (1874), Note on some of the generic modifications of the plesiosaurian pectoral arch: Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, 1874, p. 436-449.
- ^ R. Owen. (1840). Report on British fossil reptiles. Report of the Ninth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Reports on the State of Science 43-126
- ^ R. Owen. (1865). A monograph of the fossil Reptilia of the Liassic formations. Part I, Sauropterygia. Palaeontographical Society Monographs 17(75):1-40
- ^ David S. Bown and Nathalie Bardet (1996). Plesiosaurus rugosus Owen, 1840 (currently Eretmosaurus rugosus, Reptilia, Plesiosauria) neotype designated. Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature 51(3)
- ^ Benton, M. J. and Spencer, P. S. (1995). Fossil reptiles of Great Britain. Chapman and Hall, London, 386 pp.
- ^ Persson, P.O. (1963): A revision of the classification of the Plesiosauria, with a synopsis of the stratigraphical and geographical distribution of the group. University of Lunds Årsskrift 59, No. 1, p. 1-57.
- ^ Brown, D. S. (1981). The English Upper Jurassic Plesiosauroidea (Reptilia) and a review of the phylogeny and classification of the Plesiosauria. Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History): Geology, 35, (4), 253-347.
- ^ Bardet, N. (1995). Evolution et extinction des reptiles marins au cours du Mésozoïque. Palaeovertebrata, 24, 177-283.
- ^ Bardet, N.; Godefroit, P.; and Sciau, J. (1999). A new elasmosaurid plesiosaur from the Lower Jurassic of Southern France. Palaeontology'", 42, (5), 927-952.
- ^ Benson, Roger B. J.; Evans, Mark; Druckenmiller, Patrick S. (2012-03-16). Lalueza-Fox, Carles (ed.). "High Diversity, Low Disparity and Small Body Size in Plesiosaurs (Reptilia, Sauropterygia) from the Triassic–Jurassic Boundary". PLOS ONE. 7 (3): e31838. Bibcode:2012PLoSO...731838B. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0031838. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 3306369. PMID 22438869.