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Excalibosaurus

Genus of reptiles

Excalibosaurus
Summary

Genus of reptiles

Excalibosaurus (meaning "Excalibur's lizard") is a monotypic genus of marine prehistoric reptiles (ichthyosaurs) that lived during the Sinemurian stage (approximately 199.5 ± 0.3 Ma to 192.9 ± 0.3 Ma (million years ago)) of the Early Jurassic period in what is now England. It is characterized by the extreme elongation of the rostrum, with the lower jaw about three-quarters the length of the upper jaw, giving the animal a swordfish-like look. The only known species is Excalibosaurus costini.

History of research

''Excalibosaurus costini''

This relatively rare animal is known from two skeletons. The holotype, discovered in 1984 near a beach on the Somerset coast, consists of the skull, forefin, part of the pectoral girdle and some vertebrae and ribs. It has been described in 1986 by Christopher McGowan. The fossil is hosted in the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery. The second specimen is an almost complete skeleton collected in the same area in 1996, and was purchased by the Royal Ontario Museum. It was described again by McGowan in 2003.

Description

The holotype specimen has a skull length of 78.5 cm, while the largest specimen has a skull length of 1.54 m. The larger specimen has a total length of 6.528 m.

Classification

Excalibosaurus is related to two other genera of ichthyosaurs, Leptonectes from the Rhaetian (Late Triassic) to the Sinemurian (Early Jurassic) of England and Eurhinosaurus from the Toarcian (Early Jurassic) of Germany. The three genera are grouped in the family Leptonectidae. It was once thought that Excalibosaurus was a junior synonym of Eurhinosaurus, but the description of the 1996 specimen show many morphological differences such as the shape of the forefin (much shorter and broader in Excalibosaurus), the slender shape of the body, that clearly differentiate the two genera.

References

References

  1. "''Excalibosaurus'' at Fossilworks". Fossilworks.
  2. McGowan, C.. (1986). "A putative ancestor for the swordfish-like ichthyosaur ''Eurhinosaurus''". Nature.
  3. McGowan, C.. (2003). "A new Specimen of ''Excalibosaurus'' from the English Lower Jurassic". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
  4. (2015). "A Mysterious Giant Ichthyosaur from the Lowermost Jurassic of Wales". Institute of Paleobiology, Polish Academy of Sciences.
  5. Maisch, M. W.. (1998). "A new ichthyosaurian genus from the Posidonia Shale (Lower Toarcian, Jurassic) of Holzmaden, SW-Germany, with comments on the phylogeny of post-Triassic ichthyosaurs". Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie, Abhandlungen.
  6. Motani, R.. (1999). "Phylogeny of the Ichthyopterygia". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
  7. Michael W. Maisch. (2000). "The Ichthyosauria". Stuttgarter Beiträge zur Naturkunde.
Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

early-jurassic-ichthyosaurs ichthyosaurs-of-europe ichthyosauromorph-genera
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