Cymbospondylus

Cymbospondylus
	Cymbospondylus fossil
Temporal occurrence
	Triassic ( Olenekian to Ladinian )
	251.2 to 235 million years
Locations
	North America ( Nevada ); South America; Spitsbergen; Europe; China;
Systematics
	Land vertebrates (Tetrapoda)
	Sauropsida
	Diapsida
	Ichthyosaur (Ichthyosauria)
	Cymbospondylidae
	Cymbospondylus
Scientific name
	Cymbospondylus
	Leidy , 1868

Cymbospondylus is a genus of ichthyosaurs that can be identified as fossils from the late Lower Triassic to the end of the Middle Triassic . With a length of up to 10 meters, the genus belonged to the larger ichthyosaurs of the Triassic .

Discovery story

Cymbospondylus was described by Joseph Leidy in collected material from Nevada in 1868 . The first complete fossils were not found until the beginning of the 20th century by Annie Alexander in layers of the Middle Triassic in Nevada . Fossils from the same period were later unearthed on Svalbard and in Europe. Two skulls from Guizhou in China come from the Upper Triassic and were described in 2002 as Cymbospondylus asiaticus . Formerly assigned to the Shastasauria , Cymbospondylus is now considered a basal ichthyosaur.

features

Cymbospondylus had a slim body reaching a length of six to ten meters, the small skull was a maximum of one meter long. Its eye sockets are the smallest relative to body size found in an ichthyosaur, meaning that it also had the relatively smallest eyes. The lower jaw was dentate only in the front part. The tooth attachment was thecodont (i.e., they sat in a maxillary cavity ( tooth socket )). A dorsal fin was absent or only low. At first it was assumed that, unlike most other ichthyosaurs , Cymbospondylus also had no caudal fin. Jennifer Hogler later found a small tail fin. Cymbospondylus' fins were short.

literature

Richard Ellis : Sea Dragons. Predators of the Prehistoric Oceans. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence KS 2003, ISBN 0-7006-1269-6 , pp. 90-92.

Size comparison

Individual evidence

^ The Paleobiology Database. Last accessed October 7, 2009

Web links

Commons : Cymbospondylus - collection of images, videos and audio files

Cymbospondylus on Palæos.com

[1] The Paleobiology Database. Last accessed October 7, 2009