Anguanax

Anguanax is an extinct genus of basal pliosaurid known from the Late Jurassic (Oxfordian stage) Rosso Ammonitico Veronese Formation of northern Italy. It contains a single species, Anguanax zignoi, known from a partially complete individual, representing the first articulated skeleton of an Italian plesiosaurian.

==Discovery and naming== Anguanax is known solely from the holotype MPPL 18797, currently housed at the Museo Paleontologico e della Preistoria ‘P. Leonardi’ in Ferrara. The skeleton, still articulated in several blocks of limestone, consists of a partial skull including the lower jaw, 32 isolated teeth, neck, back and tail vertebrae, a right pectoral girdle, a partial left humerus, a left radius, a left ulna, three left carpals, a partial pelvis, a femur, two epipodials, isolated metapodials and phalanges. It was collected during the 1980s from a nodular and cherty limestone interval at the Kaberlaba quarry in the Asiago Municipality of the Vicenza Province of northern Italy. This interval belongs to Lithozone 5 of the Middle Unit of the Rosso Ammonitico Veronese Formation which dates to the middle Oxfordian stage of the early Late Jurassic, about 160 million years ago. This quarry was first briefly mentioned by Achille de Zigno in 1883, who collected a series of vertebrae and other elements from the neighboring Cesuna quarry. The remains originally described as being exclusively plesiosaurian by Zigno, were subsequently identified to include crocodylomorph elements among them, although neither of which can be identified to the family level. Since then, the first identifiable marine reptile was collected and named from the upper units of the formation - the metriorhynchid crocodylomorph Neptunidraco ammoniticus which is known from several specimens.