Gengasaurus Temporal range:
Late Jurassic,
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Scientific classification | |
Domain: | Eukaryota |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Chordata |
Class: | Reptilia |
Order: | † Ichthyosauria |
Family: | † Ophthalmosauridae |
Subfamily: | † Ophthalmosaurinae |
Genus: | †
Gengasaurus Parapella et al., 2017 |
Species: | †G. nicosiai
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Binomial name | |
†Gengasaurus nicosiai Parapella et al., 2017
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Gengasaurus is an extinct genus of ophthalmosaurid ichthyosaur from the Jurassic. The type and only species, Gengasaurus nicosiai, was named in 2017, after the locality of Genga, Marche. [1] It lived in Italy about 152 million years ago. [2]
The near complete holotype was discovered in 1976 in the Late Jurassic ( Tithonian) Calcari ad aptici e Saccocoma Formation at Camponocecchio and it was described in 1980 [3] and 2000 [4] as the "Genga ichthyosaur" before it was named and described in 2016 [5] [2] - this paper was eventually published in 2017. [1] The holotype is now housed at the Spaelaeo-Palaeontologic Museum in Genga.
The following cladogram shows a possible phylogenetic position of Gengasaurus in Ophthalmosauridae according to the analysis performed by Zverkov and Jacobs (2020). [6]