Paleontologists insist they’ve identified a brand unusual species of marine reptile in the ophthalmosaurid genus Platypterygius that lived roughly 125 million years ago.
A pair of Platypterigius sp. Picture credit: Dmitry Bogdanov / CC BY 3.0.
Ophthalmosauridae are a family of ichthyosaurs that lived for the length of the Jurassic and Cretaceous sessions.
These ichthyosaurs regarded worldwide for the length of the Early Bajocian, around 170 million years ago, subsequent to the disappearance of most various ichthyosaur lineages after the end of the Toarcian, 174 million years ago.
Two ophthalmosaurida lineages are known; one contains two genera: Aegirosaurus and Ophthalmosaurus, and the various contains three genera: Brachypterygius, Caypullisaurus and Platypterygius.
The newly-identified species, Platypterygius elsuntuoso, belongs to the latter genus.
This marine reptile swam in the Early Barremian seas, roughly 125 million years ago.
“The morphology of the unusual specimen concurs with the diagnostic parts of Platypterygius, supporting its inclusion on this genus,” acknowledged lead author Dr. María Páramo-Fonseca and her colleagues from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and the Museo Geológico Nacional José Royo y Gómez.
“The differences neatly-known between the specimen and all various Platypterygius species, toughen the erection of a brand unusual species, Platypterygius elsuntuoso.”
Platypterygius elsuntuoso, holotype. Scale bars – 10 cm. Picture credit: Páramo-Fonseca et al., doi: 10.15446/esrj.v28n2.112332.
The fossilized remains of a juvenile or subadult Platypterygius elsuntuoso had been gathered in 1999 by researchers from the Fundación Colombiana de Geobiología.
The specimen includes an nearly full skull, some axial components alongside side the atlasaxis and a few cervical vertebrae, the left coracoid, and a few phalanges.
“The specimen became show conceal in a concretion in La Cabrera hill, northwest of Villa de Leiva (Boyacá, Colombia) the build the Arcillolitas abigarradas Member of the Paja Formation outcrops,” the paleontologists acknowledged.
“Its accurate geographic provenance is unknown, so it became now not seemingly to hunt down out its precise stratigraphic feature.”
“Alternatively, plenty of ammonoid specimens had been extracted from the identical concretion and a few of them had been preliminarily identified as Acanthoptychoceras.”
The researchers conducted the morphological comparisons of Platypterygius elsuntuoso with the Cretaceous and Behind Jurassic ophthalmosaurid ichthyosaurs.
They additionally revised the genus Platypterygius in step with revealed descriptions and tell observations on the Colombian subject cloth.
“We concluded that Platypterygius is a genus renowned by a attribute forelimb building and a explicit mixture of skull parts,” they acknowledged.
“We emended its analysis and is known as exact the Barremian to lower Cenomanian species: Platypterygius platydactylus, Platypterygius americanus, Platypterygius australis, Platypterygius hercynicus, Platypterygius sachicarum, Platypterygius birjukovi and the unusual species Platypterygius elsuntuoso.”
“Thus, Platypterygius became a cosmopolitan genus that various as it conquered the waters of the Early to early Behind Cretaceous oceans and seas.”
The discovery of Platypterygius elsuntuoso is reported in a paper in the Earth Sciences Be taught Journal.
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María E. Páramo-Fonseca et al. 2024. A unusual species of Platypterygius (Ophthalmosauridae) from the lower Barremian of Colombia and evaluation of the species composition of the genus. Earth Sci. Res. J 28 (2): 103-126; doi: 10.15446/esrj.v28n2.112332
