Jump to content

Pneumatoarthrus

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pneumatoarthrus
Temporal range: Late Cretaceous, 70–68 Ma
Holotype vertebra ANSP 9225 seen from three different angles
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Reptilia
Order: Testudines
Suborder: Cryptodira
Family: Protostegidae
Genus: Pneumatoarthrus
Cope, 1870
Species:
P. peloreus
Binomial name
Pneumatoarthrus peloreus
Cope, 1870

Pneumatoarthrus is an extinct genus of sea turtle known from the Late Cretaceous (early Maastrichtian) Mount Laurel Formation of Monmouth County, New Jersey.[1][2] Only a single species, P. peloreus, is known.[1][2]

Taxonomy

[edit]

The holotype of Pneumatoarthrus, ANSP 9225, was originally identified as a sacrum belonging to Hadrosaurus by Joseph Leidy in an 1865 monograph on Cretaceous reptiles from the US.[1] Edward Drinker Cope later identified it belonging to a dinosaur more closely related to Anchisaurus, Efraasia, and Clepsysaurus than to Dryptosaurus and Ornithopsis,[2] and in his 1872 description of the sea turtle Protostega he decided that Pneumatoarthrus was likely a sea turtle as well, which he reiterated in his 1875 monograph on Cretaceous vertebrate fossils from the Western Interior.[3][4] Later authors overlooked Cope's 1875 monograph and considered it either a theropod or a hadrosaur (Huene 1932 considered Pneumatoarthrus the sacral vertebrae of Dryptosaurus).[5] Baird (1979) confirmed the protostegid identification of Pneumatoarthrus by Cope (1872, 1875) based on examination of ANSP 9225.[6]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b c Leidy, 1865. Memoir on the extinct reptiles of the Cretaceous formations of the United States. Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge. 14(6), 135 pp.
  2. ^ a b c Cope, 1870. Observations on the Reptilia of the Triassic formations of the Atlantic region of the United States. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 11, 444-446.
  3. ^ Cope, 1872. A description of the genus Protostega, a form of extinct Testudinata. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 12, 422-433.
  4. ^ Cope, 1875. The Vertebrata of the Cretaceous formations of the West. Report of the United States Geological Survey of the Territories. 2, 303 pp.
  5. ^ "Non-theropods".
  6. ^ Baird, D., 1979. Pneumatoarthrus Cope, 1870, not a dinosaur but a sea-turtle. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, 129(4):71-81.