Thalassiodracon

Thalassiodracon (tha-LAS-ee-o-DRAY-kon) is an extinct genus of plesiosauroid from the Pliosauridae that was alive during the Late Triassic-Early Jurassic (Rhaetian-Hettangian) and is known exclusively from the Lower Lias of England. The type and only species, is Thalassiodracon (Plesiosaurus) hawkinsii (Owen, 1838).

==Discovery and naming== thumb|left|Sculpture in Crystal Palace Park Thalassiodracon hawkinsii is known from a number of complete skeletons (lectotype: NHMUK PV OR 2018) acquired by the fossil collector Thomas Hawkins in Somerset, England during the early 1830s, before 1834. Hawkins, an eccentric Pre-Adamite who had his fossils heavily restored and illustrated by distinguished artists in expensive editions to propagate his ideas, named these Plesiosaurus triotarsostinus in 1834 and Hezatarostinus in 1840 but these names are generally disregarded. In Memoirs of Icthyosaurii and Plesiosaurii (1835) and The Book of the Great Sea Dragons (1840), Hawkins published his own illustrations after reconstructing the fossils he had obtained. Some of Hawkins original notes are being stored at the Natural History Museum in London. It was named as Plesiosaurus Hawkinsii in 1838 by Richard Owen and it was made the type species of the genus Thalassiodracon in 1996 by Storrs & Taylor.