''Crymocetus'' is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

genus of

plesiosaur 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 ...

from the

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of th ...

Chalk Group The Chalk Group (often just called the Chalk) is the lithostratigraphic unit (a certain number of rock strata) which contains the Upper Cretaceous limestone succession in southern and eastern England. The same or similar rock sequences occur acr ...

Sussex Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the English ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. Since its description, it has been seldom examined by subsequent authors, except when mentioned in discussions of Cretaceous plesiosaurs

Taxonomy

''Crymocetus'' was originally described as the new species ''Plesiosaurus bernardi'' by the legendary British paleontologist

Sir Richard Owen Sir Richard Owen (20 July 1804 – 18 December 1892) was an English biologist, comparative anatomist and paleontologist. Owen is generally considered to have been an outstanding naturalist with a remarkable gift for interpreting fossils. Ow ...

in 1850. Its type specimen consisted of a large posterior

cervical vertebra In tetrapods, cervical vertebrae (singular: vertebra) are the vertebrae of the neck, immediately below the skull. Truncal vertebrae (divided into thoracic and lumbar vertebrae in mammals) lie caudal (toward the tail) of cervical vertebrae. In sau ...

found in Cretaceous-aged chalk deposits in Sussex, England. However, the famous American paleontologist

Edward Drinker Cope Edward Drinker Cope (July 28, 1840 – April 12, 1897) was an American zoologist, paleontologist, comparative anatomist, herpetologist, and ichthyologist. Born to a wealthy Quaker family, Cope distinguished himself as a child prodigy interested ...

decided that ''P. bernardi'' warranted its own genus, which he named ''Crymocetus''. Despite Cope's action, nearly all authors tended to disregard Cope's generic name. ''Crymocetus'' was considered a species of ''

Cimoliasaurus ''Cimoliasaurus'' was a plesiosaur that lived during the Late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) of New Jersey. It grew up to long and weighed up to . Etymology The name is derived from the Greek , meaning "white chalk", and , meaning "lizard", in ...

'' by

Richard Lydekker Richard Lydekker (; 25 July 1849 – 16 April 1915) was an English naturalist, geologist and writer of numerous books on natural history. Biography Richard Lydekker was born at Tavistock Square in London. His father was Gerard Wolfe Lydekker, ...

, with ''Plesiosaurus ichthyospondylus'' and tentatively ''Plesiosaurus balticus'' as synonyms. Later authors considered ''Crymocetus'' to be either a

pliosaur Pliosauroidea is an extinct clade of plesiosaurs, known from the earliest Jurassic to early Late Cretaceous. They are best known for the subclade Thalassophonea, which contained crocodile-like short-necked forms with large heads and massive tooth ...

or a

rhomaleosaurid Rhomaleosauridae is a family of plesiosaurs from the Earliest Jurassic to the latest Middle Jurassic ( Hettangian to Callovian stages) of Europe, North America, South America and possibly Asia. Most rhomaleosaurids are known from England, man ...

.Perrson, P. O., 1963, A revision of the classification of the Plesiosauria with a synopsis of the Stratigraphical and geographical distribution of the Group: Lunds Universitets Arksskrift. N. F. Avd. 2, band 59, n 1, p. 60. In any case, ''Crymocetus'' is in need of restudy along with other plesiosaurs from Middle Cretaceous deposits in the UK.

References

Late Cretaceous plesiosaurs of Europe Fossil taxa described in 1869 Taxa named by Edward Drinker Cope {{plesiosaur-stub

Taxonomy

See also

References