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Thililua Longicollis
''Thililua'' is a genus of polycotylid plesiosaur, containing one species, ''T. longicollis''. Discovery The name ''Thililua'' is derived from that of an ancient aquatic god from local Berber mythology; ''longicollis'' refers to the animal's long neck. ''Thililua'' has been found in Late Cretaceous (early Turonian) rocks in the High Atlas mountains of Morocco in north Africa. ''Thililua'' is the first Polycotylid plesiosaur discovered in Africa, and also the first discovered that lived at a subtropical latitude. In 2010, ''Thililua'' was transferred to Leptocleididae as a sister taxon to ''Nichollssaura''. Description The type specimen of ''T. longicollis'', which was described in 2003, consists of an almost complete skull and lower jaw, articulated with 37 vertebrae. Of these vertebrae, 30 were cervical (neck) vertebrae, which is an unusually high number compared to other Polycotylids, such as ''Dolichorhynchops'', which had only 19 neck vertebrae, and ''Polycotylus' ... [...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] |
Nichollssaura
''Nichollssaura'' is an extinct genus of leptocleidid plesiosaur from the Early Cretaceous Boreal Sea of North America. The type species is ''N. borealis'', found in the early Albian age Clearwater Formation near Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada. ''Nichollssaura'' was a small plesiosaur, reaching in length and in body mass. It fills an approximate 40-million-year gap in the fossil record of North American plesiosaurs. The type specimen was discovered in one of Syncrude Canada Ltd.'s open-pit oilsand mines near Fort McMurray, Alberta, in 1994. The fossil is on display at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, missing only the left forelimb and scapula, lost when the specimen was discovered accidentally by 100-ton electric shovel operators Greg Fisher and Lorne Cundal. Etymology The fossil, named after paleontological curator Dr. Betsy Nicholls, originally was named ''Nichollsia borealis'' but ''Nichollsia'' was already in use (preoccupied) by a genus of isopods. T ... [...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] |
Plesiosaurs Of Africa
The Plesiosauria (; Greek: πλησίος, ''plesios'', meaning "near to" and ''sauros'', meaning "lizard") or plesiosaurs are an order or clade of extinct Mesozoic marine reptiles, belonging to the Sauropterygia. Plesiosaurs first appeared in the latest Triassic Period, possibly in the Rhaetian stage, about 203 million years ago. They became especially common during the Jurassic Period, thriving until their disappearance due to the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous Period, about 66 million years ago. They had a worldwide oceanic distribution, and some species at least partly inhabited freshwater environments. Plesiosaurs were among the first fossil reptiles discovered. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, scientists realised how distinctive their build was and they were named as a separate order in 1835. The first plesiosaurian genus, the eponymous '' Plesiosaurus'', was named in 1821. Since then, more than a hundred vali ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Late Cretaceous Plesiosaurs
Late may refer to: * LATE, an acronym which could stand for: ** Limbic-predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy, a proposed form of dementia ** Local-authority trading enterprise, a New Zealand business law ** Local average treatment effect, a concept in econometrics Music * ''Late'' (album), a 2000 album by The 77s * Late!, a pseudonym used by Dave Grohl on his '' Pocketwatch'' album * Late (rapper), an underground rapper from Wolverhampton * "Late" (song), a song by Blue Angel * "Late", a song by Kanye West from '' Late Registration'' Other * Late (Tonga), an uninhabited volcanic island southwest of Vavau in the kingdom of Tonga * "Late" (''The Handmaid's Tale''), a television episode * LaTe, Oy Laivateollisuus Ab, a defunct shipbuilding company * Late may refer to a person who is Dead See also * * * '' Lates'', a genus of fish in the lates perch family * Later (other) * Tardiness * Tardiness (scheduling) In scheduling, tardiness is a measure of a de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fossils Of Morocco
A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved in amber, hair, petrified wood and DNA remnants. The totality of fossils is known as the ''fossil record''. Paleontology is the study of fossils: their age, method of formation, and evolutionary significance. Specimens are usually considered to be fossils if they are over 10,000 years old. The oldest fossils are around 3.48 billion years old to 4.1 billion years old. Early edition, published online before print. The observation in the 19th century that certain fossils were associated with certain rock strata led to the recognition of a geological timescale and the relative ages of different fossils. The development of radiometric dating techniques in the early 20th century allowed scientists to quantitatively measure the absolute ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Timeline Of Plesiosaur Research
This timeline of plesiosaur research is a chronologically ordered list of important fossil discoveries, controversies of interpretation, taxonomic revisions, and cultural portrayals of plesiosaurs, an order of marine reptiles that flourished during the Mesozoic Era. The first scientifically documented plesiosaur fossils were discovered during the early 19th century by Mary Anning. Plesiosaurs were actually discovered and described before dinosaurs. They were also among the first animals to be featured in artistic reconstructions of the ancient world, and therefore among the earliest prehistoric creatures to attract the attention of the lay public. Plesiosaurs were originally thought to be a kind of primitive transitional form between marine life and terrestrial reptiles. However, now plesiosaurs are recognized as highly derived marine reptiles descended from terrestrial ancestors. Early researchers thought that plesiosaurs laid eggs like most reptiles. They commonly imagined ples ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Plesiosaur Genera
This list of plesiosaurs is a comprehensive listing of all genera that have ever been included in the order Plesiosauria, excluding purely vernacular terms. The list includes all commonly accepted genera, but also genera that are now considered invalid, doubtful ('' nomen dubium''), or were not formally published ('' nomen nudum''), as well as junior synonyms of more established names, and genera that are no longer considered plesiosaurs. The list currently includes 201 genera. Scope and terminology There is no official, canonical list of plesiosaur genera but one of the most thorough attempts can be found on the Plesiosauria section of Mikko Haaramo's Phylogeny Archive; also pertinent is the Plesiosaur Genera section at Adam Stuart Smith's Plesiosaur Directory.See Smith, ''Plesiosaur Genera''. Naming conventions and terminology follow the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. Technical terms used include: * Junior synonym: A name which describes the same taxon as a previo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cranial Sutures
In anatomy, fibrous joints are joints connected by fibrous tissue, consisting mainly of collagen Collagen () is the main structural protein in the extracellular matrix found in the body's various connective tissues. As the main component of connective tissue, it is the most abundant protein in mammals, making up from 25% to 35% of the whole .... These are fixed joints where bones are united by a layer of white fibrous tissue of varying thickness. In the skull the joints between the bones are called Suture (anatomy), sutures. Such immovable joints are also referred to as synarthrosis, synarthroses. Types Most fibrous joints are also called "fixed" or "immovable". These joints have no joint cavity and are connected via fibrous connective tissue. The skull bones are connected by fibrous joints called ''#Sutures, sutures''. In fetus, fetal skulls the sutures are wide to allow slight movement during birth. They later become rigid (synarthrosis, synarthrodial). Some of the long bo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polycotylus
''Polycotylus'' is a genus of plesiosaur within the family Polycotylidae. The type species is ''P. latippinis'' and was named by American paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope in 1869. Eleven other species have been identified. The name means 'much-cupped vertebrae', referring to the shape of the vertebrae. It lived in the Western Interior Seaway of North America toward the end of the Cretaceous. One fossil preserves an adult with a single large fetus inside of it, indicating that ''Polycotylus'' gave live birth, an unusual adaptation among reptiles. History Edward Drinker Cope named ''Polycotylus'' from the Niobrara Formation in Kansas in 1869. The holotype bones from which he based his description were fragmentary, representing only a small portion of the skeleton. A more complete skeleton was later found in Kansas and was described in 1906. A nearly complete skeleton was found in 1949 from the Mooreville Chalk Formation in Alabama, but was not described until 2002. A new species, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dolichorhynchops
''Dolichorhynchops'' is an extinct genus of polycotylid plesiosaur from the Late Cretaceous (early Turonian to late Campanian stage) of North America, containing three species, ''D. osborni'', ''D. bonneri'' and ''D. tropicensis'', as well as a questionably referred fourth species, ''D. herschelensis''. ''Dolichorhynchops'' was an oceangoing prehistoric reptile. Its Greek generic name means "long-nosed face". Discovery and species ''D. osborni'' The holotype specimen of ''Dolichorhynchops osborni'' was discovered in the upper Smoky Hill Chalk Logan County, Kansas, by George F. Sternberg, as a teenager, in around 1900. The remains were collected by him and his father, Charles H. Sternberg, and then sold to the University of Kansas (Lawrence, Kansas). KUVP 1300 was prepared and mounted by H.T. Martin under the supervision of Dr. Samuel Wendell Williston, who described and named it in 1902. A more detailed description and photographs were provided by ). The specimen has been on dis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vertebrae
The spinal column, a defining synapomorphy shared by nearly all vertebrates,Hagfish are believed to have secondarily lost their spinal column is a moderately flexible series of vertebrae (singular vertebra), each constituting a characteristic irregular bone whose complex structure is composed primarily of bone, and secondarily of hyaline cartilage. They show variation in the proportion contributed by these two tissue types; such variations correlate on one hand with the cerebral/caudal rank (i.e., location within the vertebral column, backbone), and on the other with phylogenetic differences among the vertebrate taxon, taxa. The basic configuration of a vertebra varies, but the bone is its ''body'', with the central part of the body constituting the ''centrum''. The upper (closer to) and lower (further from), respectively, the cranium and its central nervous system surfaces of the vertebra body support attachment to the intervertebral discs. The posterior part of a vertebra fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
