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Yaguarasaurus
''Yaguarasaurus'' is an extinct genus of mosasauroid from the Late Cretaceous (Turonian) period of Colombia, South America. The remains discovered (an articulated skull, some vertebrae and ribs) were defined as a new genus and species of mosasaurid, ''Yaguarasaurus columbianus'', by the Colombian paleontologist María Páramo, former director of the Museo de Geología José Royo y Gómez of INGEOMINAS in Bogotá. The first fossils remains of this animal suggested a cranial length of and a total length of ; an additional skull that measures long implies a larger size. This reptile is a member of the family of marine lizards Mosasauridae characteristic of Middle and Upper Cretaceous, with global distribution, but in South America known only through isolated remains (Price, 1957, Pierce and Welles, 1959 ; Bonaparte, 1978; Ameghino, 1918). This mosasaur discovered in Yaguará, was at the moment of discovery the most complete material known in South America. Etymology The re ...
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La Frontera Formation
The La Frontera Formation ( es, Formación La Frontera, K2F, Ksf) is a geological formation, part of the Villeta Group, of the Altiplano Cundiboyacense and neighbouring areas of the Eastern Ranges of the Colombian Andes. The sequence of limestones and lydites dates to the Late Cretaceous period; Turonian epoch and has a maximum thickness of . Fossils of '' Yaguarasaurus columbianus'' were said to be found in this formation (listed as "La Frontera Member"), although the geological mapping of the area state the time-equivalent Hondita Formation as the stratigraphic unit present in the Quebradas El Ocal and Itaibe in Huila. The La Frontera Formation does not outcrop south of Cundinamarca. A high diversity of ammonites has been found in the La Frontera Formation. Etymology The formation was first described by Hubach in 1931 and elevated to formation in 1969 by Cáceres and Etayo.Montoya & Reyes, 2005, p.24 The formation is named after the quarry La Frontera near Albán, Cun ...
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María Páramo
María Euridice Páramo Fonseca (born 1953 in Bogotá, Colombia) is a Colombian paleontologist and geologist.Los reptiles de María Páramo
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She has contributed on the paleontology in Colombia in the fields of describing various Cretaceous reptiles, most notably the mosasaurs '''' and ''
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Tethysaurinae
The Tethysaurinae are a subfamily of mosasaurs, a diverse group of Late Cretaceous marine squamates. Members of the subfamily are informally and collectively known as "tethysaurines" and have been recovered from North America and Africa. Only two tethysaurine genera are known, '' Pannoniasaurus'' and ''Tethysaurus''. The genera ''Yaguarasaurus'' and ''Russellosaurus'' were previously considered tethysaurines until they were grouped with '' Romeosaurus'' in the new subfamily Yaguarasaurinae. A possible member of this clade (subfamily) is a mosasaur specimen known from a maxilla fragment, found in 1960 in the Czech Republic (then Czechoslovakia), in Dolní Újezd near Litomyšl. Like the closely related yaguarasaurines, all tethysaurines were plesiopedal (meaning primitive and not as well adapted to marine life as later mosasaurs). They generally retained relatively small sizes compared to later giant mosasaurs. The tethysaurines appeared during the Turonian and went extinct in the ...
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Tethysaurus
''Tethysaurus'' is an extinct genus of tethysaurine mosasauroid from the Early Turonian (Late Cretaceous) period. The only species is ''Tethysaurus nopcsai''. Discovery The name means "Tethys' lizard of Nopcsa", a reference to the Greek goddess of the sea Tethys (also the name of the Tethys Ocean, an ancient sea between southern Europe and northern Africa) and to the Hungarian paleontologist Baron Ferenc Nopcsa, who made pioneering studies on Adriatic aquatic squamates. It was found in the Akrabou Formation, near the villages of Tadirhourst and Asfla in the region of Goulmima, Errachidia Province, in Morocco, with three referred specimens that included a nearly complete articulated skull, mandible, vertebrae and portions of the appendicular skeleton. The diagnosis after Bardet ''et al''. is "(...) prefrontal strongly vaulted in anterior view; parietal exhibits a triangular table ending posteriorly in two pointed pegs overlying the supraoccipital; jugal with a large and wi ...
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Russellosaurus
''Russellosaurus'' is an extinct genus of tethysaurine mosasauroid from the Late Cretaceous of North America. The genus was described from a skull discovered in an exposure of the Arcadia Park Shale (lower Middle Turonian) at Cedar Hill, Dallas County in south-central Texas, United States. The skull (SMU 73056, Shuler Museum of Paleontology, Southern Methodist University) was found in 1992 by a member of the Dallas Paleontological Society, who then donated to the museum. Other fragmentary specimens of ''Russelosaurus'' have been recovered from the slightly older Kamp Ranch Limestone at two other localities in the Dallas area. Etymology The type species, ''R. coheni'', was named for the amateur fossil collector who discovered SMU 73056, and the genus name honours paleontologist Dale A. Russell for his extensive work on mosasaurs ("Russell's lizard"). This is the second species of mosasaur to have been named for Russell, the first being ''Selmasaurus russelli'' (Wright and Shannon, ...
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Yaguará
Yaguará () is a town and municipality in the Huila Department, Colombia. The urban centre is located at an elevation of in the Magdalena River Valley and the Eastern Ranges of the Colombian Andes. The municipality borders Teruel and Palermo in the north, Gigante, Hobo and Tesalia in the south, Campoalegre and Hobo in the east and Tesalia and Iquira in the west. The departmental capital Neiva is to the northeast. The Betania Reservoir is situated within the boundaries of Yaguará. Etymology The name Yaguará is derived from the jaguar. History In the time before the Spanish conquest, the region of Yaguará was inhabited by the Páez. They defended their territory against the Pijao, who came from nearby Tolima and later against the Spanish conquistadors. Modern Yaguará was founded on March 13, 1623 by Francisco Gómez Quintero, under command of the governor of Neiva Diego de Ospina y Medinilla. Paleontology Fossils of the Late Cretaceous ( Turonian) mosasau ...
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Pannoniasaurus
''Pannoniasaurus'' is an extinct genus of tethysaurine mosasauroid known from the Late Cretaceous Csehbánya Formation (Santonian stage) of Hungary. It contains a single species, ''Pannoniasaurus inexpectatus'', Material was copied from this source, which is available under a Creative Commons License. dubbed "unexpected" because it was discovered in freshwater sediments, unlike other mosasaurs, which were marine predators. It was a medium-sized mosasaur, reaching up to in length. Discovery and naming The holotype (MTM 2011.43.1) and referred specimens have been collected from the alluvial sediments of the Csehbánya Formation from various exposures at the Iharkút open-pit bauxite mine, Bakony Hills, Western Hungary since the discovery of the locality in 2000. A single vertebra has been collected in 1999 from the Ajka Coal Formation at the waste dump of the coal mines next to the town of Ajka, 20 km from Iharkút. Currently more than one hundred bones of ''Pannoniasaurus ...
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Plioplatecarpinae
Plioplatecarpinae is a subfamily of mosasaurs, a diverse group of Late Cretaceous marine squamates. Members of the subfamily are informally and collectively known as "plioplatecarpines" and have been recovered from all continents, though the occurrences in Australia remain questionable. The subfamily includes the genera '' Latoplatecarpus'', ''Platecarpus'', ''Plioplatecarpus'' and ''Plesioplatecarpus''. Plioplatecarpines were small to medium-sized mosasaurs that were comparatively fast and agile compared to mosasaurs of other subfamilies. The first plioplatecarpines appear in the Turonian and are among the oldest of mosasaurs, and the clade persists throughout the Maastrichtian, a period of approximately 24 million years. The subfamily was seemingly heavily affected during a poorly understood middle-Campanian mosasaur extinction event and its genera appear to have faced competition from mosasaurine mosasaurs during the Maastrichtian, leading to a decline in numbers and in divers ...
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Russellosaurina
Mosasaurs (from Latin ''Mosa'' meaning the 'Meuse', and Greek ' meaning 'lizard') comprise a group of extinct, large marine reptiles from the Late Cretaceous. Their first fossil remains were discovered in a limestone quarry at Maastricht on the Meuse in 1764. They belong to the order Squamata, which includes lizards and snakes. Mosasaurs probably evolved from an extinct group of aquatic lizards known as aigialosaurs in the Earliest Late Cretaceous with 42 described genera. During the last 20 million years of the Cretaceous period (Turonian–Maastrichtian ages), with the extinction of the ichthyosaurs and pliosaurs, mosasaurs became the dominant marine predators. They themselves became extinct as a result of the K-Pg event at the end of the Cretaceous period, about 66 million years ago. Description Mosasaurs breathed air, were powerful swimmers, and were well-adapted to living in the warm, shallow inland seas prevalent during the Late Cretaceous period. Mosasaurs were so w ...
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Mosasauroid
Mosasaurs (from Latin ''Mosa'' meaning the 'Meuse', and Greek ' meaning 'lizard') comprise a group of extinct, large marine reptiles from the Late Cretaceous. Their first fossil remains were discovered in a limestone quarry at Maastricht on the Meuse in 1764. They belong to the order Squamata, which includes lizards and snakes. Mosasaurs probably evolved from an extinct group of aquatic lizards known as aigialosaurs in the Earliest Late Cretaceous with 42 described genera. During the last 20 million years of the Cretaceous period (Turonian–Maastrichtian ages), with the extinction of the ichthyosaurs and pliosaurs, mosasaurs became the dominant marine predators. They themselves became extinct as a result of the K-Pg event at the end of the Cretaceous period, about 66 million years ago. Description Mosasaurs breathed air, were powerful swimmers, and were well-adapted to living in the warm, shallow inland seas prevalent during the Late Cretaceous period. Mosasaurs were so we ...
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South America
South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southern subregion of a single continent called America. South America is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east by the Atlantic Ocean; North America and the Caribbean Sea lie to the northwest. The continent generally includes twelve sovereign states: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, and Venezuela; two dependent territories: the Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands; and one internal territory: French Guiana. In addition, the ABC islands of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Ascension Island (dependency of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, a British Overseas Territory), Bouvet Island ( dependency ...
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Cladogram
A cladogram (from Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an evolutionary tree because it does not show how ancestors are related to descendants, nor does it show how much they have changed, so many differing evolutionary trees can be consistent with the same cladogram. A cladogram uses lines that branch off in different directions ending at a clade, a group of organisms with a last common ancestor. There are many shapes of cladograms but they all have lines that branch off from other lines. The lines can be traced back to where they branch off. These branching off points represent a hypothetical ancestor (not an actual entity) which can be inferred to exhibit the traits shared among the terminal taxa above it. This hypothetical ancestor might then provide clues about the order of evolution of various features, adaptation, and other evolutionary narratives about an ...
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