Kaiwhekea
Kaiwhekea | |
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Restoration with size comparison | |
Scientific classification ![]() | |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Chordata |
Class: | Reptilia |
Superorder: | †Sauropterygia |
Order: | †Plesiosauria |
Family: | †Elasmosauridae |
Clade: | †Aristonectinae |
Genus: | †Kaiwhekea Cruickshank & Fordyce, 2002 |
Species | |
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Kaiwhekea is an extinct genus of plesiosaur from the Late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian age) of what is now New Zealand.
History of discovery
![](../I/m/Kaiwhekea_NT_small.jpg)
The type species, Kaiwhekea katiki, was first described by Arthur Cruickshank and Ewan Fordyce in 2002. Kaiwhekea was approximately 7 metres long and lived around 70-69 million years ago. The single known specimen, found in the Katiki Formation, is nearly complete, and is on display at the Otago Museum in Dunedin, New Zealand.[1]
Classification
Kaiwhekea has been placed as an aristonectine plesiosaur close to Aristonectes (O'Keefe and Street, 2009). In 2010, Kaiwhekea was transferred to Leptocleididae,[2] but more recent analyses do not find the same result.[3]
The following cladogram shows the placement of Kaiwhekea within Elasmosauridae following an analysis by Rodrigo A. Otero, 2016:[4]
![](../I/m/Kaiwhekea1DB.jpg)
Elasmosauridae |
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See also
References
- ↑ Cruickshank, Arthur R.I.; Fordyce, R. Ewan (2002). "A new marine reptile (Sauropterygia) from New Zealand: further evidence for a Late Cretaceous austral radiation of cryptoclidid plesiosaurs". Palaeontology. 45 (3): 557–575. doi:10.1111/1475-4983.00249.
- ↑ Ketchum, H. F.; Benson, R. B. J. (2010). "Global interrelationships of Plesiosauria (Reptilia, Sauropterygia) and the pivotal role of taxon sampling in determining the outcome of phylogenetic analyses". Biological Reviews. 85: 361–392. doi:10.1111/j.1469-185X.2009.00107.x. PMID 20002391.
- ↑ O'Gorman, J.P.; Otero, R.A.; Hiller, N.; Simes, J.; Terezow, M. (2016). "Redescription of Tuarangisaurus keyesi (Sauropterygia; Elasmosauridae), a key species from the uppermost Cretaceous of the Weddellian Province: Internal skull anatomy and phylogenetic position". Cretaceous Research. doi:10.1016/j.cretres.2016.11.014.
- ↑ Otero, R. A. (2016). "Taxonomic reassessment of Hydralmosaurus as Styxosaurus: new insights on the elasmosaurid neck evolution throughout the Cretaceous". PeerJ. 4: e1777. doi:10.7717/peerj.1777. PMC 4806632. PMID 27019781.
External links
- Kaiwhekea, University of Otago, New Zealand