Thalassomedon haningtoni on:
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''Thalassomedon'' (from Greek, ''thalassa'', "sea" and
''Thalassomedon'' is among the largest elasmosaurids, with a total length of for the holotype. There is a larger skull, however, suggesting a much larger animal, potentially up to . Gregory S. Paul proposed that a long individual would have weighed , while O'Gorman and his colleagues proposed that a long individual would have weighed more than . The neck is also very long; it comprises 62
The skeleton
{{Taxonbar, from=Q2467257 Late Cretaceous plesiosaurs of North America Elasmosaurids Fossil taxa described in 1943 Taxa named by Samuel Paul Welles Sauropterygian genera
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
, ''medon'', "lord" or "ruler", meaning "sea lord") is a genus
Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...
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 ...
, named by Welles in 1943.
Description
''Thalassomedon'' is among the largest elasmosaurids, with a total length of for the holotype. There is a larger skull, however, suggesting a much larger animal, potentially up to . Gregory S. Paul proposed that a long individual would have weighed , while O'Gorman and his colleagues proposed that a long individual would have weighed more than . The neck is also very long; it comprises 62 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 i ...
Carpenter, K. (1999). "Revision of North American elasmosaurs from the Cretaceous western interior." ''Paludicola'', 2(2): 148-173. and is about - over half of the total length. The skull is long, with long teeth. The flippers were about long. Stones have been found in its stomach area leading some to theorize that they were used for ballast or digestion
Digestion is the breakdown of large insoluble food molecules into small water-soluble food molecules so that they can be absorbed into the watery blood plasma. In certain organisms, these smaller substances are absorbed through the small intest ...
. If the latter, stomach action would cause the stones to help grind ingested food.
Discovery
This genus of plesiosaur lived in North America, approximately 95million years ago
The abbreviation Myr, "million years", is a unit of a quantity of (i.e. ) years, or 31.556926 teraseconds.
Usage
Myr (million years) is in common use in fields such as Earth science and cosmology. Myr is also used with Mya (million years ago). ...
- this places it during the Cenomanian
The Cenomanian is, in the ICS' geological timescale, the oldest or earliest age of the Late Cretaceous Epoch or the lowest stage of the Upper Cretaceous Series. An age is a unit of geochronology; it is a unit of time; the stage is a unit in the s ...
stage. Its closest relative is ''Elasmosaurus
''Elasmosaurus'' (;) is a genus of plesiosaur that lived in North America during the Campanian stage of the Late Cretaceous period, about 80.5million years ago. The first specimen was discovered in 1867 near Fort Wallace, Kansas, US, and was se ...
'', and both belong to the family Elasmosauridae
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 p ...
. There are six specimens of varying states of preservation on display at various museums in the United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
.
See also
*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 ...
* 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
External links
The skeleton
{{Taxonbar, from=Q2467257 Late Cretaceous plesiosaurs of North America Elasmosaurids Fossil taxa described in 1943 Taxa named by Samuel Paul Welles Sauropterygian genera