Brachauchenius
| Brachauchenius | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Brachauchenius chases Hesperornis |
||||||||||||
| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Lower to Upper Cretaceous ( Barremium to Cenomanium ) | ||||||||||||
| 130.7 to 93.9 million years | ||||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Brachauchenius | ||||||||||||
| Williston , 1903 | ||||||||||||
Brachauchenius ( Gr . Brakhys "short", aukhen "neck", + ius ) was a large pliosaur and the last representative of this group in the North American Western Interior Seaway .
He is known from three almost completely preserved skulls, fins and two partially preserved skeletons. Only one species has been described, the type species Brachauchenius lucasi .
features
Brachauchenius was a very large pliosaur and reached a length of eleven meters, of which the skull was 1.5 meters.
The fins were about 1.8 meters long. It had only 13 very short cervical vertebrae that lacked the ventral openings that most other pliosaurs had. They are connected with single-headed ribs , while the other pliosaurs had double-headed neck ribs . The neck reached 75% of the length of the skull, making it the relatively shortest of all plesiosaurs. The skull is triangular, broad at the back and tapering at the front.
It resembles that of a mosasaur more than that of other pliosaurs, whose snouts were graduated in front of the nostrils. The large teeth were structured by grooves that branched out towards the base of the teeth.
Systematics
Brachauchenius is part of the Pliosauridae family , but some scientists put it together with Kronosaurus in their own Brachauchenidae family.
swell
- Richard Ellis : Sea Dragons. Predators of the Prehistoric Oceans. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence KS 2003, ISBN 0-7006-1269-6 , p. 192.
- Ben Creisler: Plesiosauria Translation and Pronunciation Guide Brachauchenius ( Memento from October 13, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
Web links
- Mike Everhart: The skull of Brachauchenius lucasi Williston 1903
- The Paleobiology Database: Brachauchenius