Topic summary
Pliosaur
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Pliosauroidea.
Phylogeny
Pliosauroidea is a stem-based taxon that was defined by Welles as "all taxa more closely related to Pliosaurus brachydeirus than to Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus". Pliosauridae and Rhomaleosauridae are stem-based taxa too. Pliosauridae is defined as "all taxa more closely related to Pliosaurus brachydeirus than to Leptocleidus superstes, Polycotylus latipinnis or Meyerasaurus victor". Rhomaleosauridae is defined as "all taxa more closely related to Meyerasaurus victor than to Leptocleidus superstes, Pliosaurus brachydeirus or Polycotylus latipinnis". The cladogram below follows a 2011 analysis by paleontologists Hilary F. Ketchum and Roger B. J. Benson, and reduced to genera only.