Kaiwhekea

Kaiwhekea () is an extinct genus of plesiosaur from the Late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian age) of what is now New Zealand.

==History of discovery== thumb|left|Restoration The holotype was discovered in 1983 by Gary Raper, an amateur fossil collector, at the base of a cliff at Shag Point, Otago. It was later recovered by a team from the University of Otago's Geology department. The specimen was enclosed in a large concretion measuring metres long and weighing an estimated 10 tons. The block was split along natural seams and dragged out on a sledge (made from a car bonnet). The skeleton is mostly preserved as negative moulds as the mineralised bone was too fragile to be preserved.