Kaiwhekea
Kaiwhekea ([ˌkaiˈfɛkɛa]) is an extinct genus of plesiosaur from the Late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian age) of what is now New Zealand.
| Kaiwhekea Temporal range: Late Cretaceous, | |
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| Restoration | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Reptilia |
| Superorder: | †Sauropterygia |
| Order: | †Plesiosauria |
| Family: | †Elasmosauridae |
| Subfamily: | †Aristonectinae |
| Genus: | †Kaiwhekea Cruickshank & Fordyce, 2002 |
| Type species | |
| †Kaiwhekea katiki Cruickshank & Fordyce, 2002 | |
History of discovery
The type species, Kaiwhekea katiki, was first described by Arthur Cruickshank and Ewan Fordyce in 2002. Kaiwhekea was approximately 6.5–7 metres (21–23 ft) long and weighed 1.5 metric tons (1.7 short tons) in body mass. It lived around the middle Maastrichtian. The single known specimen, found in the Katiki Formation near Shag Point on the coast of Otago, is nearly complete, and is on display at the Otago Museum in Dunedin, New Zealand.[1][2][3]
Classification
Kaiwhekea has been placed as an aristonectine plesiosaur close to Aristonectes (O'Keefe and Street, 2009). In 2010, Kaiwhekea was transferred to Leptocleididae,[4] but more recent analyses do not find the same result.[5]
The following cladogram shows the placement of Kaiwhekea within Elasmosauridae following an analysis by Rodrigo A. Otero, 2016:[6]
| Elasmosauridae |
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References
- Cruickshank, Arthur R.I.; Fordyce, R. Ewan (2002). "A new marine reptile (Sauropterygia) from New Zealand: further evidence for a Late Cretaceous austral radiation of cryptoclidid plesiosaurs". Palaeontology. 45 (3): 557–575. doi:10.1111/1475-4983.00249.
- Paul, Gregory S. (2022). The Princeton Field Guide to Mesozoic Sea Reptiles. Princeton University Press. p. 118. ISBN 9780691193809.
- Fordyce, R. Ewan. "Kaiwhekea katiki, a Late Cretaceous plesiosaur from high southern latitudes". otago.ac.nz. University of Otago. Retrieved 11 January 2023.
- Ketchum, H. F.; Benson, R. B. J. (2010). "Global interrelationships of Plesiosauria (Reptilia, Sauropterygia) and the pivotal role of taxon sampling in determining the outcome of phylogenetic analyses". Biological Reviews. 85 (2): 361–392. doi:10.1111/j.1469-185X.2009.00107.x. PMID 20002391. S2CID 12193439.
- O'Gorman, J.P.; Otero, R.A.; Hiller, N.; Simes, J.; Terezow, M. (2016). "Redescription of Tuarangisaurus keyesi (Sauropterygia; Elasmosauridae), a key species from the uppermost Cretaceous of the Weddellian Province: Internal skull anatomy and phylogenetic position". Cretaceous Research. 71: 118–136. doi:10.1016/j.cretres.2016.11.014.
- Otero, R. A. (2016). "Taxonomic reassessment of Hydralmosaurus as Styxosaurus: new insights on the elasmosaurid neck evolution throughout the Cretaceous". PeerJ. 4: e1777. doi:10.7717/peerj.1777. PMC 4806632. PMID 27019781.
External links
- Kaiwhekea, University of Otago, New Zealand
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