Taniwhasaurus

Taniwhasaurus oweni, the type species for Taniwhasaurus, was named and described by James Hector in 1874 from a fossil specimen found in the late Campanian Conway Formation outcrops at Haumuri Bluff, New Zealand (a stage known in the New Zealand geologic time scale as Haumurian). The skeletal material consisted of a skull, vertebrae, and paddles, which occurred in three separate sections but were thought to all belong to the same species.[2] Further cranial material and vertebrae were collected in 1999.[3] Tylosaurus haumuriensis, which was also named by Hector from the front parts of the jaws,[2] was found to be a junior taxon of T. oweni.[3]

The genus Lakumasaurus was described in 2002 by Novas et al. from a fossil specimen found in the Santa Marta Formation of James Ross Island, Antarctica. When the type material was reexamined in 2007, James E. Martin and Marta Fernández determined Lakumasaurus to be a junior synonym of Taniwhasaurus and recombined the species Lakumasaurus antarcticus as T. antarcticus.[4]

"Yezosaurus" was the name given to an undescribed genus of prehistoric marine reptile. Originally thought to be a Tyrannosaur dinosaur, it was later identified as a mosasaur or ichthyosaur which lived in what is now Japan.[5] The "type species", "Yezosaurus mikasaensis", was coined by Obata and Muramoto in 1977, but was not formally described until 2008, when the species T. mikasaensis was described by M.W. Caldwell et al (thereby making Y. mikasaensis a nomen nudum).