Pneumatoarthrus
| Pneumatoarthrus Temporal range: Late Cretaceous,
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|---|---|
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| Holotype vertebra ANSP 9225 seen from three different angles | |
Scientific classification 
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| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Reptilia |
| Order: | Testudines |
| Suborder: | Cryptodira |
| Family: | †Protostegidae |
| Genus: | †Pneumatoarthrus Cope, 1870 |
| Species: | †P. peloreus
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| Binomial name | |
| †Pneumatoarthrus peloreus Cope, 1870
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Pneumatoarthrus is an extinct genus of sea turtle known from the Late Cretaceous (early Maastrichtian) Mount Laurel Formation of Monmouth County, New Jersey.[1][2] Only a single species, P. peloreus, is known.[1][2]
Taxonomy
[edit]The holotype of Pneumatoarthrus, ANSP 9225, was originally identified as a sacrum belonging to Hadrosaurus by Joseph Leidy in an 1865 monograph on Cretaceous reptiles from the US.[1] Edward Drinker Cope later identified it belonging to a dinosaur more closely related to Anchisaurus, Efraasia, and Clepsysaurus than to Dryptosaurus and Ornithopsis,[2] and in his 1872 description of the sea turtle Protostega he decided that Pneumatoarthrus was likely a sea turtle as well, which he reiterated in his 1875 monograph on Cretaceous vertebrate fossils from the Western Interior.[3][4] Later authors overlooked Cope's 1875 monograph and considered it either a theropod or a hadrosaur (Huene 1932 considered Pneumatoarthrus the sacral vertebrae of Dryptosaurus).[5] Baird (1979) confirmed the protostegid identification of Pneumatoarthrus by Cope (1872, 1875) based on examination of ANSP 9225.[6]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c Leidy, 1865. Memoir on the extinct reptiles of the Cretaceous formations of the United States. Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge. 14(6), 135 pp.
- ^ a b c Cope, 1870. Observations on the Reptilia of the Triassic formations of the Atlantic region of the United States. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 11, 444-446.
- ^ Cope, 1872. A description of the genus Protostega, a form of extinct Testudinata. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 12, 422-433.
- ^ Cope, 1875. The Vertebrata of the Cretaceous formations of the West. Report of the United States Geological Survey of the Territories. 2, 303 pp.
- ^ "Non-theropods".
- ^ Baird, D., 1979. Pneumatoarthrus Cope, 1870, not a dinosaur but a sea-turtle. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, 129(4):71-81.
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