Recent developments in Australasian sauropterygian palaeontology (Reptilia: Sauropterygia)

WA Museum Records and Supplements | Updated 9 years ago

Abstract - A brief review of recent research into Australasian sauropterygians is given. The earliest record is an Anisian pachypleurosaur from South Island, New Zealand. An Early Jurassic record from Queensland, hitherto included in the Plesiosauria is shown to be the last known pachypleurosaur. A diverse record of Pliosauroidea is known from the time of the break-up of East Gondwana, in marginal rift sediments of Western Australia and South Australia, dated to the earliest Cretaceous. The record of the marine incursion into the Eromanga Basin, Queensland, contains Albian-age pliosaurs and elasmosaurs. The New Zealand plesiosaurian record contains mostly members of the 'long-necked' Plesiosauroidea, all from the Haumurian stage of the Campanian-Maastrichtian. One specimen represents a unique record of a cryptoclidid in Australasia, more closely related to the European Callovian Cryptoclidus than to the other late cryptoclidids known from South America and the Antarctic Peninsula.