Macroplata is a rhomaleosaurid plesiosaur from the Lower Jurassic of Warwickshire, UK. Macroplata was named and briefly described by Swinton (1930a) based on a single skeleton from Harbury, Warwickshire, and the skeleton was redescribed in detail by Ketchum and Smith (2010).
Category «Plesiosauria»
Liopleurodon
Liopleurodon is a pliosaur that hardly needs introduction since appearing as the villain in the BBC’s ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’ TV series. This led to popular misconceptions about the size of Liopleurodon, which is known to have reached adult sizes in the region of seven metres long, nowhere near the gargantuan 25m estimate proposed by the series and later perpetuated elsewhere.
Libonectes
Libonectes was erected for ‘Elasmosaurus morgani’. The pectoral girdle and a forelimb of the holotype are figured (most recently by Welles 1962, fig. 12) but now lost (Carpenter 1999). Libonectes morgani (Welles 1949) is the type and only species.
Leptocleidus
Lower Cretaceous plesiosaurs are rare, so Leptocleidus is important because it fills a gap in the fossil record of plesiosaurians. Leptocleidus was once considered to be a late surviving member of the family Rhomaleosauridae but it has recently been reidentified as a close relative of polycotylids.
Kronosaurus
Due to its large size and ferocious appearance, Kronosaurus is one of the most famous plesiosaurs. The iconic skeleton referred to Kronosaurus on display in the Museum of Comparative Zoology in Harvard is nicknamed ‘plasterosaurus’ because so much of it is reconstructed in plaster.
Kimmerosaurus
Kimmerosaurus is a poorly known cryptoclidid plesiosaur known only from skull and neck material (Brown 1981, Brown et al. 1986). It differs from other plesiosaurs in the large number of needle-like teeth in its jaws, and in the form of its teeth, which are completely smooth and lack the longitidinal ridges present in other plesiosaurs.
Hydrotherosaurus
Hydrotherosaurus is a long-necked elasmosaurid from California, USA. It is represented by one of the most complete elasmosaurid skeletons ever discovered, so Hydrotherosaurus is one of the best known members of this family. The almost complete type skeleton of Hydrotherosaurus was discovered in the Panoche Hills by Mr.
Eretmosaurus
The genus Eretmosaurus was erected for ‘Plesiosaurus’ rugosus by Seeley (1874). Eretmosaurus is a rogue taxon in cladistic analyses and researchers have been in disagreement about its taxonomic affinity. Eretmosaurus has been included in several different families: the Rhomaleosauridae based on the anatomy of its girdles (Persson 1963); the Pliosauridae (Brown 1981), the Elasmosauridae (Bardet 1995, Bardet et al.