Stenorhynchosaurus

Stenorhynchosaurus is an extinct genus of pliosaurid plesiosaur which lived in South America during the Early Cretaceous. The type species and only known is Stenorhynchosaurus munozi.^[1]

Discovery

Fossils from the front of a snout of plesiosaur were discovered in 2000 on the property of Jorge Muñoz, in Loma La Cabrera, near Villa de Leyva in Boyaca, Colombia, on grounds of marine origin dating from the Barremian epoch of the Cretaceous. Muñoz reported the find to the local authorities, who in turn gave notice to staff of the Museo Geológico José Royo y Gómez in the Colombian Geological Survey in Bogotá. Then was made the excavation of the nearly complete skeleton between 2004 and 2005, in collaboration with the Fundación Colombiana de Geobiología (Colombian Geobiology Foundation), and the remains being then transferred to Bogotá, assigning the catalog number VL17052004-1, for preparation and study. The remains were found articulated mostly in the Segment C of Member Arcillolitas Abigarradas of the Paja Formation, with kaolinitic argillite corresponding to an intertidal marine environment, with several specimens of ammonites or impressions of these in the rock matrix, including one inside the skull. These ammonites include the species Gerhardtia galeatoides, G. provincialis and the genus Heinzia, typical of the Barremian. German paleontologist Oliver Hampe made an initial description of the specimen in 2005, classifying it as Brachauchenius sp., i.e. as an indeterminate species of this genus, previously only recorded in the Upper Cretaceous of the United States, and it constitute the first reappearance of non-rhomaleosaurid pliosaurs after a hiatus between the Berriasian to Hauterivian.^[2] In 2016 María Páramo, Marcela Gómez-Pérez, Fernando Etayo and Leslie Noé made a more complete description and they designated to VL17052004-1 as holotype of a new genus and species, Stenorhynchosaurus munozi. The genus name is derived from the Greek words stenos, "narrow"; rhyncho, "snout" and saurus, "lizard", while the species name, munozi is in recognition of Jorge Muñoz by discover and report the fossil.^[1]

References