Ophthalmothule

Ophthalmothule; Temporal range: Tithonian-Berriasian; ~145 Ma PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N ↓
	Quarry map (A) and reconstruction (B) of holotype skeleton
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Reptilia
Superorder:	†Sauropterygia
Order:	†Plesiosauria
Family:	†Cryptoclididae
Genus:	†Ophthalmothule; Roberts et al., 2020
Type species
	†Ophthalmothule cryostea; Roberts et al., 2020

Opthalmothule (meaning "eye of the north"), was a cryptoclidid plesiosaur dating to the latest Volgian (around the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary), found in the Slottsmøya Member Lagerstätte of the Agardhfjellet Formation in Spitsbergen. The type species is O. cryostea.[1]

Description

Size comparison

Opthalmothule was about 5 metres (16 ft) long. It was noted to have unusually large eye sockets, which suggests a paleobiological specialization, such as deep water and/or nocturnal hunting. Along with Abyssosaurus, it is one of the youngest cryptoclidids known from boreal regions. The holotype is known from skeletal material that includes a complete cranium and a partial mandible, a complete and articulated cervical vertebrae, a set of pectoral and anterior to middle dorsal series, and the pectoral girdle and anterior humeri.[1]

gollark: Why are there potatOS update pings so *often*?

gollark: ```<86.155.87.56> 185.39.9.34 [25/Aug/2020:16:20:01 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 301 169 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 zgrab/0.x" secure```suspicious.

gollark: ggez?

gollark: Well, I don't want to swear.

gollark: I something, half my webserver logs are just potatOS pinging for updates.

References

Roberts, A.J.; Druckenmiller, P.S.; Cordonnier, B.; Delsett, L.L.; Hurum, J.H. (2020). "A new plesiosaurian from the Jurassic–Cretaceous transitional interval of the Slottsmøya Member (Volgian), with insights into the cranial anatomy of cryptoclidids using computed tomography". PeerJ. 8: e8652. doi:10.7717/peerj.8652.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.

[Roberts2020-1] Roberts, A.J.; Druckenmiller, P.S.; Cordonnier, B.; Delsett, L.L.; Hurum, J.H. (2020). "A new plesiosaurian from the Jurassic–Cretaceous transitional interval of the Slottsmøya Member (Volgian), with insights into the cranial anatomy of cryptoclidids using computed tomography". PeerJ. 8: e8652. doi:10.7717/peerj.8652.