Yaguarasaurus
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Yaguarasaurus Temporal range: Turonian, 90 Ma |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Reptilia |
| Order: | Squamata |
| Superfamily: | †Mosasauroidea |
| Family: | †Mosasauridae |
| Subfamily: | †Yaguarasaurinae |
| Genus: |
†Yaguarasaurus Páramo, 1994 |
| Type species | |
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†Y. columbianus Páramo, 1994 |
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Yaguarasaurus is an extinct genus of mosasauroid from the Late Cretaceous (Turonian) period of Colombia, South America. The remains discovered (an articulated skull, some vertebrae and ribs) were defined as a new genus and species of mosasaurid, Yaguarasaurus columbianus, by the Colombian paleontologist María Páramo, former director of the Museo de Geología José Royo y Gómez of INGEOMINAS in Bogotá. The first fossils remains of this animal suggested a cranial length of 47 centimetres (19 in) and a total length of 5 metres (16 ft); an additional skull that measures 87 centimetres (34 in) long implies a larger size.
This reptile is a member of the family of marine lizards Mosasauridae characteristic of Middle and Upper Cretaceous, with global distribution, but in South America known only through isolated remains (Price, 1957, Pierce and Welles, 1959 ; Bonaparte, 1978;Ameghino, 1918). This mosasaur discovered in Yaguará, was at the moment of discovery the most complete material known in South America.
The remains were found in a limestone bed (Upper Turonian) of the La Frontera Formation, member of the Villeta Group, near Yaguará, Huila, in a site called Cueva Rica. Its name means "Yaguará lizard of Colombia".
In the initial descriptions of Yaguarasaurus it was classified as a member of the subfamily Plioplatecarpinae; the analysis of Polcyn and Bell, 2005 showed that it was a distant relative of the advanced mosasaurids and were a close relative of Russellosaurus coheni and Tethysaurus nopscai, a group that could be a basal clade to the division between Tylosaurinae and Plioplatecarpinae subfamilies, called Russellosaurina. After the discovery of the basal mosasauroid of Hungary Pannoniasaurus by Makádi et al. 2012 it became clear that Yaguarasaurus and the rest of the "russellosaurines" form a clade of basal amphibian mosasaurs related with the aigialosaurs, a grouping called the subfamily Tethysaurinae; the cladogram below follow the analysis of Makádi et al. de 2012:
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