Cryptoclididae is a

family Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Ideall ...

of medium-sized

plesiosaur The Plesiosauria (; Greek: πλησίος, ''plesios'', meaning "near to" and ''sauros'', meaning "lizard") or plesiosaurs are an order or clade of extinct Mesozoic marine reptiles, belonging to the Sauropterygia. Plesiosaurs first appeared ...

s that existed from the Middle Jurassic to the Early Cretaceous. They had long necks, broad and short skulls and densely packed teeth. They fed on small soft-bodied preys such as small fish and

crustacean Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapods, seed shrimp, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods, barnacles, copepods, amphipods and mantis shrimp. The crustacean group ...

s. The earliest members of the family appeared during the early

Bajocian In the geologic timescale, the Bajocian is an age and stage in the Middle Jurassic. It lasted from approximately 170.3 Ma to around 168.3 Ma (million years ago). The Bajocian Age succeeds the Aalenian Age and precedes the Bathonian Age. Stra ...

, and they represented the dominant group of long-necked plesiosaurs during the latter half of the Jurassic.

Classification

In 2010, two supposed late Cretaceous members of the group were reclassified as other kinds of plesiosauroids. '' Kaiwhekea'' was reclassified to

Leptocleididae Leptocleididae is a family of small-sized plesiosaurs that lived during the Early Cretaceous period (early Berriasian to early Albian The Albian is both an age (geology), age of the geologic timescale and a stage (stratigraphy), stage in the s ...

, and '' Aristonectes'' was transferred to

Elasmosauridae Elasmosauridae is an extinct family of plesiosaurs, often called elasmosaurs. They had the longest necks of the plesiosaurs and existed from the Hauterivian to the Maastrichtian stages of the Cretaceous, and represented one of the two groups of p ...

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 ...

based on Ketchum and Benson (2010):

References

External links

palaeos.com
Jurassic plesiosaurs Cretaceous plesiosaurs Callovian first appearances Late Cretaceous extinctions Prehistoric reptile families {{Jurassic-reptile-stub