Eretmosaurus Temporal range: Early - Middle Jurassic, | |
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Neotype specimen of E. rugosus | |
Scientific classification ![]() | |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Chordata |
Class: | Reptilia |
Superorder: | † Sauropterygia |
Order: | † Plesiosauria |
Superfamily: | † Plesiosauroidea |
Family: | † Microcleididae |
Genus: | † Eretmosaurus Seeley, 1874 |
Type species | |
†Eretmosaurus rugosus Seeley, 1874 | |
Other species | |
Synonyms | |
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Eretmosaurus (meaning "oar lizard") is an extinct genus of plesiosaur from the Early and Middle Jurassic of England and Russia. [1] [2] Two species are known: E. rugosus and E. dubius.
The holotype of E. rugosus has no known recorded specimen number [3] and it consists of vertebrae, girdles, and limb bones discovered in Granby, Nottinghamshire where the Asteroceras obtusum zone of the Lower Lias Formation outcrops. [4]
Specimen BRSMB Cb 2458 was also assigned to the species by Owen (1840). [5] This specimen later became the syntype and it consisted of several vertebrae that had been discovered at different locations in the Blue Lias Formation in Gloucestershire across Aust Cliff. [3]
Owen (1840) was the first to describe the specimens, which were named as Plesiosaurus rugosus. [5] 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, [6] and Seeley used NHMUK 14435 as the basis for naming Eretmosaurus rugosus in 1874. [7]
As BRSMB Cb 2458 was not diagnostic and was lost by 1940, 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. [8]
A fragmentary specimen of Eretmosaurus rugosus has also been identified from the Middle Jurassic of Siberia by Menner (1992). [2]
A partial skull and skeleton belonging to a plesiosaur was discovered in the Harpoceras faleifer zone, Whitby, England [3] and it was initially described by Blake & Tate (1876) as a species of Plesiosaurus known as P. dubius. It was later reclassified as a species of Eretmosaurus by Blake in Blake & Tate (1876). [9]
Benton and Spencer (1995) mentioned a third 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 . [4]
Eretmosaurus was classified into Rhomaleosauridae by Persson (1963), [10] then into Pliosauridae by Brown (1981), [11] then into Elasmosauridae by Bardet (1995) [12] and Bardet et al. (1999), [13] and most recently into Microcleididae by Benson et al. (2012). [14]
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