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]
Eretmosaurus Temporal range: Early Jurassic,
| |
---|---|
Neotype specimen of E. rugosus | |
Scientific 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 | |
|
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]
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]