Pliosauridae

Pliosauridae is a family of plesiosaurian marine reptiles from the Earliest Jurassic to the early Late Cretaceous (Hettangian to Turonian stages) of Australia, Europe, North America and South America. Past the Turonian, they may have been replaced by the mosasaurs. It was formally named by Harry G. Seeley in 1874.[1]

Pliosaurids Temporal range: Late Triassic - Late Cretaceous, 228–89.3 Ma PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N
Cast of Attenborosaurus conybeari, Natural History Museum
Liopleurodon ferox mounted skeleton, Museum of Paleontology, Tübingen
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Reptilia
Superorder:	†Sauropterygia
Order:	†Plesiosauria
Suborder:	†Pliosauroidea
Family:	†Pliosauridae Seeley, 1874
Subgroups
†Thalassiodracon †Pachycostasaurus †Hauffiosaurus †Attenborosaurus †Marmornectes †Anguanax †Rhaeticosaurus †Arminisaurus †Thalassophonea

Relationships

Pliosauridae is a stem-based taxon defined in 2010 (and in earlier studies in a similar manner) as "all taxa more closely related to Pliosaurus brachydeirus than to Leptocleidus superstes, Polycotylus latipinnis or Meyerasaurus victor".[1] The family Brachauchenidae has been proposed to include pliosauroids which have very short necks and may include Brachauchenius and Kronosaurus.[2] However, modern cladistic analyses found that this group is actually a subfamily of pliosaurids,[3] and possibly even the "crown group" of Pliosauridae.[4]

The following cladogram follows an analysis by Benson & Druckenmiller (2014).[5]