Zulma Brandoni de Gasparini

Leonardo Salgado

Academic paper

Revista Espanola de Paleontologia

15

1

13-21

New plesiosaur material from the Late Cretaceous of northwestern Patagonia is described. Some characters (cervical lateral ridge, pelvic bar) suggest close affinities with the Elasmosauridae, a group of plesiosauroids whose Late Cretaceous derived members were cosmopolitan. The new specimens, found in Lago Pellegrini, Rio Negro Province (Late Campanian-Early Maastrichtian), reveal that Trinacromerwn lafquenianum Gasparini and Goni, 1985, is not a valid taxon, and that the material does not belong to the Polycotylidae but to the Elasmosauridae. Some morphological and histological characters of the pelvic bones suggest that all these specimens are subadult. The outcrops correspond to an estuarine palaeoenvironment at the northwestern of a wide Atlantic transgression that covered most of Patagonia.

Plesiosauria, Elasmosauridae, Late Cretaceous, Patagonia.

English