Trinacromerum
| Trinacromerum Temporal range: Late Cretaceous | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Trinacromerum at Royal Ontario Museum | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Sauropsida |
| Order: | Plesiosauria |
| Suborder: | Plesiosauroidea |
| Family: | Polycotylidae |
| Genus: | Trinacromerum |
Trinacromerum is an extinct genus of sauropterygian reptile belonging to the plesiosaur suborder. Specimens that lived during the Late Cretaceous period have been discovered in what is now modern Kansas and Manitoba.
Description
Trinacromerum with a human to scale.
It was 3 meters (9.8 feet) long. Its teeth show it fed on small fish.
The long flippers of Trinacromerum enabled it to achieve high swimming speeds.[1] Its physical appearance was described by Richard Ellis as akin to a "four-flippered penguin."[2]
Classification
Profile view of Trinacromerum
Trinacromerum bentonianum from the Late Cretaceous of Kansas
Below is a cladogram of polycotylid relationships from Ketchum & Benson, 2011.[3]
| Plesiosauroidea |
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |
See also
References
- ↑ Ellis, Richard (2003). Sea Dragons: Predators of the Prehistoric Oceans. University Press of Kansas. p. 189. ISBN 0-7006-1269-6.
- ↑ Ellis, 190
- ↑ Hilary F. Ketchum and Roger B. J. Benson (2011). "A new pliosaurid (Sauropterygia, Plesiosauria) from the Oxford Clay Formation (Middle Jurassic, Callovian) of England: evidence for a gracile, longirostrine grade of Early-Middle Jurassic pliosaurids". Special Papers in Palaeontology 86: 109–129. doi:10.1111/j.1475-4983.2011.01083.x.
External links
PaleoDB Entry on Manitoba discovery
 |
Wikispecies has information related to: Trinacromerum |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Friday, January 29, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.