Eretmosaurus
Temporal range: Early Jurassic, 199.5–198 Ma
↓
Neotype specimen of E. rugosus
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Reptilia
Superorder: †Sauropterygia
Order: †Plesiosauria
Family: †Microcleididae
Genus: †Eretmosaurus
Seeley, 1874
Type species
†Eretmosaurus rugosus
Seeley, 1874
Synonyms

Eretmosaurus is an extinct genus of plesiosaur from the Early Jurassic Blue Lias of England.[1] Only the type species is known, which is E. rugosus.[2]

History

c. 1870 illustration of the holotype
Restoration

The holotype consists of several vertebrae that were discovered in the Blue Lias in Gloucestershire. Owen (1840) was the first to describe the specimen, which was assigned to Plesiosaurus rugosus.[3]

Later, Owen (1865) described a headless skeleton discovered in the Ammonites stellaris zone of the Blue Lias at Granby, Nottinghamshire (NHMUK 14435) that he assigned to P. rugosus,[4] and Seeley used NHMUK 14435 as the basis for describing and naming Eretmosaurus rugosus in 1874.[2]

A petition was filed with the ICZN over the holotype by Brown and Bardet (1994),[1] and NHMUK 14435 was allocated as the official neotype in 1996.[5]

Benton and Spencer (1995) mentioned a second species of Eretmosaurus: E. macropterus; they rectified this mistake within the same paper by mentioning on page 116 that E. macropterus actually belongs to Microcleidus.[6]

Classification

Eretmosaurus was classified into Rhomaleosauridae by Persson (1963),[7] then into Pliosauridae by Brown (1981),[8] then into Elasmosauridae by Bardet (1995)[9] and Bardet et al. (1999),[10] and most recently into Microcleididae by Benson et al. (2012).[11]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b David S. Brown and Nathalie Bardet (1994). Plesiosaurus rugosus Owen, 1840 (currently Eretmosaurus rugosus, Reptilia, Plesiosauria) proposed designation of a neotype. Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature 51(3)
  2. ^ a b Seeley, H. G., (1874), Note on some of the generic modifications of the plesiosaurian pectoral arch: Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, 1874, p. 436-449.
  3. ^ R. Owen. (1840). Report on British fossil reptiles. Report of the Ninth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Reports on the State of Science 43-126
  4. ^ R. Owen. (1865). A monograph of the fossil Reptilia of the Liassic formations. Part I, Sauropterygia. Palaeontographical Society Monographs 17(75):1-40
  5. ^ David S. Bown and Nathalie Bardet (1996). Plesiosaurus rugosus Owen, 1840 (currently Eretmosaurus rugosus, Reptilia, Plesiosauria) neotype designated. Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature 51(3)
  6. ^ Benton, M. J. and Spencer, P. S. (1995). Fossil reptiles of Great Britain. Chapman and Hall, London, 386 pp.
  7. ^ Persson, P.O. (1963): A revision of the classification of the Plesiosauria, with a synopsis of the stratigraphical and geographical distribution of the group. University of Lunds Årsskrift 59, No. 1, p. 1-57.
  8. ^ Brown, D. S. (1981). The English Upper Jurassic Plesiosauroidea (Reptilia) and a review of the phylogeny and classification of the Plesiosauria. Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History): Geology, 35, (4), 253-347.
  9. ^ Bardet, N. (1995). Evolution et extinction des reptiles marins au cours du Mésozoïque. Palaeovertebrata, 24, 177-283.
  10. ^ Bardet, N.; Godefroit, P.; and Sciau, J. (1999). A new elasmosaurid plesiosaur from the Lower Jurassic of Southern France. Palaeontology'", 42, (5), 927-952.
  11. ^ Benson, Roger B. J.; Evans, Mark; Druckenmiller, Patrick S. (2012-03-16). Lalueza-Fox, Carles (ed.). "High Diversity, Low Disparity and Small Body Size in Plesiosaurs (Reptilia, Sauropterygia) from the Triassic–Jurassic Boundary". PLOS ONE. 7 (3): e31838. Bibcode:2012PLoSO...731838B. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0031838. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 3306369. PMID 22438869.


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