''Hudsonelpidia'' is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

genus Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...

of small

parvipelvia Parvipelvia (Latin for "little pelvis" - ''parvus'' meaning "little" and ''pelvis'' meaning "pelvis") is an extinct clade of euichthyosaur ichthyosaurs that existed from the Late Triassic to the early Late Cretaceous (middle Norian to Cenomanian ...

ichthyosaur Ichthyosauria is an order of large extinct marine reptiles sometimes referred to as "ichthyosaurs", although the term is also used for wider clades in which the order resides. Ichthyosaurians thrived during much of the Mesozoic era; based on fo ...

known from

British Columbia British Columbia is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

Description

''Hudsonelpidia'' is known only from the

holotype A holotype (Latin: ''holotypus'') is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of s ...

, a nearly complete

skeleton A skeleton is the structural frame that supports the body of most animals. There are several types of skeletons, including the exoskeleton, which is a rigid outer shell that holds up an organism's shape; the endoskeleton, a rigid internal fra ...

measuring less than long. It was collected in the Jewitt Spur locality from the

Pardonet Formation The Schooler Creek Group is a stratigraphic unit of Middle Triassic, Middle to Late Triassic (Ladinian to Norian) Geochronology, age in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin. It is present in northeastern British Columbia. It was named for School ...

, dating to the middle

Norian The Norian is a division of the Triassic geological period, Period. It has the rank of an age (geology), age (geochronology) or stage (stratigraphy), stage (chronostratigraphy). It lasted from ~227.3 to Mya (unit), million years ago. It was prec ...

stage of the

Late Triassic The Late Triassic is the third and final epoch (geology), epoch of the Triassic geologic time scale, Period in the geologic time scale, spanning the time between annum, Ma and Ma (million years ago). It is preceded by the Middle Triassic Epoch a ...

, about 210

million years ago Million years ago, abbreviated as Mya, Myr (megayear) or Ma (megaannum), is a unit of time equal to (i.e. years), or approximately 31.6 teraseconds. Usage Myr is in common use in fields such as Earth science and cosmology. Myr is also used w ...

. It was found on the northern shore of the

Peace Reach Peace is a state of harmony in the absence of hostility and violence, and everything that discusses achieving human welfare through justice and peaceful conditions. In a societal sense, peace is commonly used to mean a lack of conflict (such a ...

branch of

Williston Lake Williston Lake is a reservoir created by the W. A. C. Bennett Dam which is located in the Northern Interior of British Columbia, Canada. Geography The lake fills the basin of the upper Peace River, backing into the Rocky Mountain Trench which ...

. ''Hudsonelpidia'' has a very stable position in many

cladistic Cladistics ( ; from Ancient Greek 'branch') is an approach to biological classification in which organisms are categorized in groups ("clades") based on hypotheses of most recent common ancestry. The evidence for hypothesized relationships is ...

analyses. The family Hudsonelpidiidae was named by McGowan and Motani in 2003 to include this genus.McGowan C, Motani R. 2003. Ichthyopterygia. – In: Sues, H.-D. (ed.): ''Handbook of Paleoherpetology, Part 8, Verlag Dr. Friedrich Pfeil'', 175 pp., 101 figs., 19 plts; München

Taxonomy

''Hudsonelpidia'' was named by Chris McGowan in

1995 1995 was designated as: * United Nations Year for Tolerance * World Year of Peoples' Commemoration of the Victims of the Second World War This was the first year that the Internet was entirely privatized, with the United States government ...

and the

type species In International_Code_of_Zoological_Nomenclature, zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the spe ...

is ''Hudsonelpidia brevirostris''.

References

Late Triassic ichthyosaurs of North America Triassic British Columbia Fossils of British Columbia Fossil taxa described in 1995 Ichthyosauromorph genera {{triassic-reptile-stub

Description

Taxonomy

See also

References