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Serpentisuchops
''Serpentisuchops'' (meaning "snaky crocodile-face") is a genus of polycotylid plesiosaur from the late Cretaceous Pierre Shale of Wyoming, United States. The genus contains a single species, ''S. pfisterae'', known from a partial skeleton. Discovery and naming The holotype specimen, GPM5001, was found at the Old Woman Anticline in the upper Pierre Shale in 1995 and brought to the collection of the Paleon Museum in Glenrock. This locality is dated to the lower Maastrichtian age of the upper Cretaceous period, around 69.59 to 70.00 million years old. It consists of a partial skull, lower jaw, and vertebral column, in addition to the left ilium and pubis. In 2022, ''Serpentisuchops pfisterae'' was described as a new genus and species of polycotylid plesiosaur by Walter S. Persons, Hallie P. Street, and Amanda Kelley based on these remains. The generic name, "''Serpentisuchops''", is derived from the Latin words "serpent", meaning "snake", and "suchus" meaning "crocodile" ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Serpentisuchops Pfisterae
''Serpentisuchops'' (meaning "snaky crocodile-face") is a genus of polycotylid plesiosaur from the late Cretaceous Pierre Shale of Wyoming, United States. The genus contains a single species, ''S. pfisterae'', known from a partial skeleton. Discovery and naming The holotype specimen, GPM5001, was found at the Old Woman Anticline in the upper Pierre Shale in 1995 and brought to the collection of the Paleon Museum in Glenrock. This locality is dated to the lower Maastrichtian age of the upper Cretaceous period, around 69.59 to 70.00 million years old. It consists of a partial skull, lower jaw, and vertebral column, in addition to the left ilium and pubis. In 2022, ''Serpentisuchops pfisterae'' was described as a new genus and species of polycotylid plesiosaur by Walter S. Persons, Hallie P. Street, and Amanda Kelley based on these remains. The generic name, "''Serpentisuchops''", is derived from the Latin words "serpent", meaning "snake", and "suchus" meaning "crocodile ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pierre Shale
The Pierre Shale is a geologic formation or series in the Upper Cretaceous which occurs east of the Rocky Mountains in the Great Plains, from Pembina Valley in Canada to New Mexico. The Pierre Shale was described by Meek and Hayden in 1862 in the Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences (Philadelphia). They described it as a dark-gray shale, fossiliferous, with veins and seams of gypsum, and concretions of iron oxide. The Pierre Shale is about 700 feet (210m) thick at the type locality. It overlies the Niobrara division and underlies the Fox Hills beds. It was named for an occurrence near Fort Pierre on the Missouri River in South Dakota. The Pierre Shale is of marine origin and was deposited in the Western Interior Seaway. It is correlative with other marine shales that occur farther west, such as the Bearpaw Shale, Mancos Shale and the Lewis Shale. It correlates with the Lea Park Formation in central Alberta. The Pierre is overlain by marginal marine deposits of the Fox H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polycotylinae
Polycotylidae is a family of plesiosaurs from the Cretaceous, a sister group to Leptocleididae. Polycotylids first appeared during the Albian stage of the Early Cretaceous, before becoming abundant and widespread during the early Late Cretaceous. Several species survived into the final stage of the Cretaceous, the Maastrichtian. With their short necks and large elongated heads, they resemble the pliosaurs, but closer phylogenetic studies indicate that they share many common features with the Leptocleididae and Elasmosauridae. They have been found worldwide, with specimens reported from New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Morocco, the US, Canada, Eastern Europe, and South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe .... Phylogeny Cladogram after Albright, Gillette and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polycotylids
Polycotylidae is a family of plesiosaurs from the Cretaceous, a sister group to Leptocleididae. Polycotylids first appeared during the Albian stage of the Early Cretaceous, before becoming abundant and widespread during the early Late Cretaceous. Several species survived into the final stage of the Cretaceous, the Maastrichtian. With their short necks and large elongated heads, they resemble the pliosaurs, but closer phylogenetic studies indicate that they share many common features with the Leptocleididae and Elasmosauridae. They have been found worldwide, with specimens reported from New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Morocco, the US, Canada, Eastern Europe, and South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe .... Phylogeny Cladogram after Albright, Gillette and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2022 In Reptile Paleontology
This list of fossil reptiles described in 2022 is a list of new taxa of fossil reptiles that were described during the year 2022, as well as other significant discoveries and events related to reptile paleontology that occurred in 2022. Squamates New taxa Research * A study aiming to determine whether the squamate fossil record contains reliable phylogenetic information in spite of its incompleteness is published by Woolley ''et al.'' (2022). * The first fossil material of scincomorph lizards from the Campanian Nenjiang Formation (Jilin, China) is described by Yang ''et al.'' (2022). * Vullo ''et al.'' (2022) reinterpret the fossil material of '' Jeddaherdan aleadonta'' as Quaternary in age, and consider it to be a fossil material of a member of the genus ''Uromastyx''. * First fossil material of galliwasp from Cuba reported to date is described from the Late Pleistocene of El Abrón Cave by Syromyatnikova & Aranda (2022), providing the first data on tooth and jaw morpholog ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polycotylid
Polycotylidae is a family of plesiosaurs from the Cretaceous, a sister group to Leptocleididae. Polycotylids first appeared during the Albian stage of the Early Cretaceous, before becoming abundant and widespread during the early Late Cretaceous. Several species survived into the final stage of the Cretaceous, the Maastrichtian. With their short necks and large elongated heads, they resemble the pliosaurs, but closer phylogenetic studies indicate that they share many common features with the Leptocleididae and Elasmosauridae. They have been found worldwide, with specimens reported from New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Morocco, the US, Canada, Eastern Europe, and South America. Phylogeny Cladogram A cladogram (from Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an evolutionary tree because it does not show how ancestors are related to d ... after Albright, Gillette and Tit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polycotylidae
Polycotylidae is a family of plesiosaurs from the Cretaceous, a sister group to Leptocleididae. Polycotylids first appeared during the Albian stage of the Early Cretaceous, before becoming abundant and widespread during the early Late Cretaceous. Several species survived into the final stage of the Cretaceous, the Maastrichtian. With their short necks and large elongated heads, they resemble the pliosaurs, but closer phylogenetic studies indicate that they share many common features with the Leptocleididae and Elasmosauridae. They have been found worldwide, with specimens reported from New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Morocco, the US, Canada, Eastern Europe, and South America. Phylogeny Cladogram A cladogram (from Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an evolutionary tree because it does not show how ancestors are related to d ... after Albright, Gillette and Tit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elasmosaurids
Elasmosauridae is an extinct family of plesiosaurs, often called elasmosaurs. They had the longest necks of the plesiosaurs and existed from the Hauterivian to the Maastrichtian stages of the Cretaceous, and represented one of the two groups of plesiosaurs present at the end of the Cretaceous alongside Polycotylidae. Their diet mainly consisted of crustaceans and molluscs. Description The earliest elasmosaurids were mid-sized, about . In the Late Cretaceous, elasmosaurids grew as large as , such as ''Styxosaurus'', ''Albertonectes'', and '' Thalassomedon''. Their necks were the longest of all the plesiosaurs, with anywhere between 32 and 76 (''Albertonectes'') cervical vertebrae. They weighed up to several tons. Classification Early three-family classification Though Cope had originally recognized ''Elasmosaurus'' as a plesiosaur, in an 1869 paper he placed it, with ''Cimoliasaurus'' and ''Crymocetus'', in a new order of sauropterygian reptiles. He named the group Streptosaur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microcleididae
Microcleididae is an extinct family of basal plesiosauroid plesiosaurs from the Early Jurassic (middle Sinemurian to late Toarcian stages) of France, Germany, Portugal and the United Kingdom. Currently, the oldest and the most known microcleidid is ''Eretmosaurus'' from the middle Sinemurian of the United Kingdom. Microcleididae was formally named and described by Roger B. J. Benson, Mark Evans and Patrick S. Druckenmiller in 2012. History and Phylogeny Großman (2007) referred informally to "microcleidid elasmosaurs", a clade comprising the three taxa referred to the Microcleididae by Benson ''et al.'' (2012). Ketchum and Benson (2010) found the traditional "microcleidid" genera to nest within a monophyletic Plesiosauridae, in a close position to ''Plesiosaurus''. However, Ketchum and Benson (2011) performed a phylogenetic analysis which found a monospecific Plesiosauridae, and a monophyletic Microcleididae. Smith ''et al.'' (in press) described a new "microcleidid" '' Lusonec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pliosaurids
Pliosauridae is a family of plesiosaurian marine reptiles from the Latest Triassic to the early Late Cretaceous (Rhaetian to Turonian stages) of Australia, Europe, North America and South America. The family is more inclusive than the archetypal short-necked large headed species that are placed in the subclade Thalassophonea, with basal forms resembling other plesiosaurs with long necks. They became extinct during the early Late Cretaceous and were subsequently replaced by the mosasaurs. It was formally named by Harry G. Seeley in 1874. Relationships Pliosauridae is a stem-based taxon defined in 2010 (and in earlier studies in a similar manner) as "all taxa more closely related to ''Pliosaurus brachydeirus'' than to '' Leptocleidus superstes'', '' Polycotylus latipinnis'' or ''Meyerasaurus victor''". The family Brachauchenidae has been proposed to include pliosauroids which have very short necks and may include ''Brachauchenius'' and ''Kronosaurus''. However, modern cladistic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Late Cretaceous
The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''creta'', the Latin word for the white limestone known as chalk. The chalk of northern France and the white cliffs of south-eastern England date from the Cretaceous Period. Climate During the Late Cretaceous, the climate was warmer than present, although throughout the period a cooling trend is evident. The tropics became restricted to equatorial regions and northern latitudes experienced markedly more seasonal climatic conditions. Geography Due to plate tectonics, the Americas were gradually moving westward, causing the Atlantic Ocean to expand. The Western Interior Seaway divided North America into eastern and western halves; Appalachia and Laramidia. India maintained a northward course towards Asia. In the Southern Hemisphere, Australia and Ant ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Niche Differentiation
In ecology, niche differentiation (also known as niche segregation, niche separation and niche partitioning) refers to the process by which competing species use the environment differently in a way that helps them to coexist. The competitive exclusion principle states that if two species with identical niches (ecological roles) compete, then one will inevitably drive the other to extinction. This rule also states that two species cannot occupy the same exact niche in a habitat and coexist together, at least in a stable manner. When two species differentiate their niches, they tend to compete less strongly, and are thus more likely to coexist. Species can differentiate their niches in many ways, such as by consuming different foods, or using different areas of the environment. As an example of niche partitioning, several anole lizards in the Caribbean islands share common diets—mainly insects. They avoid competition by occupying different physical locations. Although these liz ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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