''Orophosaurus'' is an dubious genus of elasmosaurid
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
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 ...
of New Mexico.
Taxonomy
''Orophosaurus'' is known only from the type species, ''O. pauciporus'', which is based on AMNH 5692 (portions of three cervical vertebrae). The holotype was found in the Late Cretaceous Fox Hills Formation of the San Juan Basin in New Mexico. Welles (1962) judged ''Orophosaurus'' to be a ''nomen vanum'' because of the very fragmentary nature of the holotype.
[S. P. Welles. 1962. A new species of elasmosaur from the Aptian of Colombia and a review of the Cretaceous plesiosaurs. University of California Publications in Geological Sciences 44(1):1-96. http://www.redciencia.cu/geobiblio/paper/1962_Welles_%20rvw%20of%20K%20plesiosaurs.pdf]
See also
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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 inv ...
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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 duri ...
References
Elasmosaurids
Taxa named by Edward Drinker Cope
Sauropterygian genera
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