''Morenosaurus'' 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 ...

plesiosaur The Plesiosauria or plesiosaurs are an Order (biology), order or clade of extinct Mesozoic marine reptiles, belonging to the Sauropterygia. Plesiosaurs first appeared in the latest Triassic Period (geology), Period, possibly in the Rhaetian st ...

from the

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 143.1 to 66 mya (unit), million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era (geology), Era, as well as the longest. At around 77.1 million years, it is the ...

of what is now

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. 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 ''Morenosaurus stocki'', first named by Samuel Welles in 1943, in honor of Dr. Chester Stock.Hilton, Richard P., ''Dinosaurs and Other Mesozoic Animals of California'', University of California Press, Berkeley 2003 , at page 105 The species was found by Robert Wallace and Arthur Drescher in the Panoche Hills region of

Fresno County Fresno County (), officially the County of Fresno, is a county located in the central portion of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 United States census, the population was 1,008,654. The county seat is Fresno, the fifth-most populo ...

. The skeleton they found was fairly complete, and lacked only the head and parts of the neck and paddles; the preserved portion of the trunk and tail is long. The skeleton was originally mounted at

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private university, private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small g ...

but is now in the

Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County Nature is an inherent character or constitution, particularly of the ecosphere or the universe as a whole. In this general sense nature refers to the laws, elements and phenomena of the physical world, including life. Although humans are par ...

. ''Morenosaurus'' may have been similar to ''

Elasmosaurus ''Elasmosaurus'' () is a genus of plesiosaur that lived in North America during the Campanian stage of the Late Cretaceous period, at about 80.6 to 77million years ago. The first specimen was discovered in 1867 near Fort Wallace, Kansas, US, and ...

'' or ''

Thalassomedon ''Thalassomedon'' (from Greek, ''thalassa'', "sea" and Greek, ''medon'', "lord" or "ruler", meaning "sea lord") is a genus of plesiosaur, named by Welles in 1943. Description ''Thalassomedon'' is among the largest elasmosaurids, with the holo ...

'', but studies in the early 2000s indicated that the

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserve ...

s were too scrappy to identify to the family level.

References

* Sepkoski, J.J. (2002). A compendium of fossil marine animal genera. ''Bulletins of American Paleontology'' 363: 1-560. * Drunkenmiller, Patrick S. and Russell, Anthony P. (2006)
A new elasmosaurid plesiosaur (Reptilia: Sauropterygia) from the Lower Cretaceous Clearwater Formation, northeastern Alberta, Canada.
''Paludicola'' 5 (4): 184-199.

External links

''Morenosaurus''
from the PaleoBiology Database

at the Natural History Museum {{Taxonbar, from=Q6911404 Late Cretaceous plesiosaurs of North America Elasmosauridae Taxa named by Samuel Paul Welles Sauropterygian genera

See also

References

External links