Plesiosaurs from the fluvial Kem Kem Group (mid-Cretaceous) of eastern Morocco and a review of non-marine plesiosaurs

Bunker, Georgina; Martill, David M.; Smith, Roy E.; Zouhri, Samir; Longrich, Nicholas R.

doi:10.1016/j.cretres.2022.105310

Cited by 4 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 87 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Fossils of other plesiosaur clades have also been found in freshwater or marginal environments (e.g., [82, 104]). A review of these materials have been carried out by Bunker et al [201]. Therefore, I don’t re-examine all these fossils but focus on body sizes of freshwater plesiosaurs from China.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition to their flourish in marine environments, multiple plesiosaur lineages entered freshwater or marginal habitats and radiated there [201]. One clade of iconical freshwater plesiosaurs, Leptocleididae, is characterized for their relatively short necks and small body sizes [334].…”

Section: Leptocleididae and Freshwater Plesiosaurs From Chinamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The most widely used criterion is the fusion of neural arches to the centra, proposed by Brown [38]. However, whether this criterion is suitable for all plesiosaurs has been questioned and challenged in recent years, because lack of vertebral fusion has been observed in some relatively large individuals from Pliosauridae, Leptoclididae and Rhomaleosauridae [193, 187, 201, 202].…”

Section: Preliminaries To Plesiosaur Reconstructionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The smallest L. capensis was only around 200 kg. There exist some fossil materials referable to Leptocleidus but undiagnostic at species level, and they all indicate small body sizes [201]. Besides freshwater species, leptocleidids are also known from marine environments.…”

Section: Leptocleididae and Freshwater Plesiosaurs From Chinamentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Body reconstruction and size estimation of plesiosaurs

Zhao

2024

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Body size is the key to understanding many biological properties. Sizes of extinct animals are usually estimated from body reconstructions since their masses can not be weighed directly. Plesiosaurs were Mesozoic marine reptiles that were diverse in both body plan and size. Attempts to estimate body masses of plesiosaurs were rare in the past two centuries, possibly due to lack of knowledge about their postcranial anatomy and body shapes in life. The burst of plesiosaur studies in the past two decades has greatly expanded our cognition of their physiology, taxonomy, potential behavior and even soft body outlines. Here I present a comprehensive review of relevant knowledge, and propose a uniform set of methodology for rigorous body reconstruction of plesiosaurs. Twenty-two plesiosaur models were constructed under these criteria, and they were subsequently used as samples to find proxies for body mass. It is revealed that multiple skeletal elements are good indicators of plesiosaur size. This study offers scaling equations for size estimation, enabling quick acquisition of body mass information from fragmented fossils. A summary of body size evolution of different plesiosaur clades is also provided.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Leptocleididae and Freshwater Plesiosaurs From Chinamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Preliminaries To Plesiosaur Reconstructionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Leptocleididae and Freshwater Plesiosaurs From Chinamentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Body reconstruction and size estimation of plesiosaurs

Zhao

2024

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This implies that the duplication of tooth structures is possible in lizard teeth, but the arrangement and presumed function in the two would have been very different. Plesiosaur teeth, including Leptocleididae [45,58] and Pliosauridae [45,59,60], bear enamel ridges that resemble those forming the cutting edge of the carinae of the teeth, and these furthermore may have small knots or denticlelike structures. Herbivorous dinosaurs such as Hadrosauridae and Ceratopsidae evolved prominent lingual ridges of the teeth [61,62], but these lack denticles, and it is unclear whether they are homologous to the tooth carinae, or a distinct structure.…”

Section: Implications For Mosasaurid Evolutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stelladens mysteriosus: A Strange New Mosasaurid (Squamata) from the Maastrichtian (Late Cretaceous) of Morocco

Longrich

Suberbiola

Bardet³

2023

Fossil Studies

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Mosasaurids, a clade of specialized marine squamates, saw a major adaptive radiation in the Late Cretaceous, evolving a wide range of body sizes, shapes, and specialized tooth morphologies. The most diverse known mosasaurid faunas come from the late Maastrichtian phosphates of Morocco. Here, we report an unusual new mosasaurid, Stelladens mysteriosus, based on a partial jaw and associated tooth crowns from lower Couche III phosphatic deposits at Sidi Chennane, Oulad Abdoun Basin, Morocco. Stelladens is characterized by short, triangular tooth crowns with a series of strong, elaborate, and serrated ridges on the lingual surface of the tooth, functioning as accessory carinae. Morphology of the teeth and associated jaw fragment suggest affinities with Mosasaurinae. No close analogues to the unique tooth morphology of Stelladens are known, either extant or extinct. It may have had an unusual and highly specialized diet, a specialized prey-capture strategy, or both. The diversity of mosasaurid teeth is much higher than that of plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs, or extant marine mammals, and likely reflects both the ecological diversity of mosasaurids and complex developmental mechanisms responsible for tooth formation in mosasaurines. Mosasaurid diversity continued to increase up to the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary.

show abstract