Pistosauroidea
Sign in to saveAlso known as Pistosauroids, Pistosauria, Pistosaurs
Pistosauroidea is a group of marine reptiles within the superorder Sauropterygia that first appeared in the latter part of the Early Triassic and were the ancestors of plesiosaurs. Pistosauroids are rare in Triassic marine assemblages, and are represented by only a few fossils from central Europe, the United States, and China. Recent phylogenetic analyses consider the Triassic pistosauroids to be a paraphyletic grouping, meaning that they do not form a true clade. Plesiosauria is now placed within Pistosauroidea, while the traditional pistosauroids are successively more basal, or primitive, sa
Wikidata facts
- Image
- Augustasaurus BW.jpg
Show 2 more facts
- taxon name
- Pistosauroidea
- taxon rank
- superorder
Sources (1)
via Wikidata · CC0
~1 min read
Encyclopedic overview
1 sectionsContents
- References
Pistosauroidea is a group of marine reptiles within the superorder Sauropterygia that first appeared in the latter part of the Early Triassic and were the ancestors of plesiosaurs. Pistosauroids are rare in Triassic marine assemblages, and are represented by only a few fossils from central Europe, the United States, and China. Recent phylogenetic analyses consider the Triassic pistosauroids to be a paraphyletic grouping, meaning that they do not form a true clade. Plesiosauria is now placed within Pistosauroidea, while the traditional pistosauroids are successively more basal, or primitive, sauropterygians.
Below is a cladogram of pistosauroid relationships from Cheng et al. (2006):
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Pistosauroidea” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.