Morenosaurus

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Morenosaurus

Morenosaurus is an extinct

Extinction

In biology and ecology, extinction is the death of every member of a species or group of taxon. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of that species ....
genus

Genus

A genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the classification of living and fossil organisms. The taxonomic ranks are domain , kingdom , phylum, class , order , family , genus, and species....
of plesiosaur

Plesiosaur

Plesiosaurs were carnivore aquatic reptiles. After their discovery, they were somewhat fancifully said to have resembled , although they had no shell....
from the Cretaceous

Cretaceous

The Cretaceous , usually abbreviated K for its German translation Kreide, is a geologic period from circa to million years ago . In the geologic timescale, the Cretaceous follows on the Jurassic period and is followed by the Paleogene period....
of what is now California

California

California is a U.S. state on the West Coast of the United States of the United States, along the Pacific Ocean. It is bordered by Oregon to the north, Nevada to the east, Arizona to the southeast, and to the south the Mexico state of Baja California....
. The type species

Type species

In taxonomy, a type species is the species that originally defined a genus . It is an individual specimen that fixes the name of a genus . Two different definitions are used interchangeably, in a general term and a botanical term....
is Morenosaurus stocki, first named by Welles in 1943, in honor of Dr. Chester Stock. Morenosaurus may have been similar to Elasmosaurus
Elasmosaurus

Elasmosaurus Greek language e?as???/elasmos = thin plate + sa????/sauros = lizard) is a genus of plesiosaur with an extremely long neck that lived in the Late Cretaceous....
or Thallasomedon, but studies in the early 2000s indicated that the fossil

Fossil

Fossils are the preserved remains or trace fossil of animals, plants, and other organisms from the remote past. The totality of fossils, both discovered and undiscovered, and their placement in fossiliferous Rock formations and sedimentary rock layers is known as the fossil record....
s were too scrappy to identify to the family level. Morenosaurus is not to be confused with the similarly-named plesiosaur Muraenosaurus
Muraenosaurus

Muraenosaurus is an extinct genus of sauropterygian reptile. It lived in the Middle Jurassic of Europe, growing to 8 metres long. Half of its length was its neck, which consisted of 44 vertebrae; in addition its skull was small....
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