| Tethysaurinae Temporal range: Late Cretaceous
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| Skeleton of Tethysaurus. | |
Scientific classification 
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| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Reptilia |
| Order: | Squamata |
| Clade: | †Mosasauria |
| Family: | †Mosasauridae |
| Clade: | †Russellosaurina |
| Subfamily: | †Tethysaurinae Makádi et al., 2012 |
| Genera | |
The Tethysaurinae are a subfamily of mosasaurs, a diverse group of Late Cretaceous marine squamates. Members of the subfamily are informally and collectively known as "tethysaurines" and have been recovered from North America and Africa.[1] Only two tethysaurine genera are known, Pannoniasaurus and Tethysaurus. The genera Yaguarasaurus and Russellosaurus were previously considered tethysaurines until they were grouped with Romeosaurus in the new subfamily Yaguarasaurinae.[2] A possible member of this clade (subfamily) is a mosasaur specimen known from a maxilla fragment, found in 1960 in the Czech Republic (then Czechoslovakia), in Dolní Újezd near Litomyšl.[3]
Like the closely related yaguarasaurines, all tethysaurines were plesiopedal (meaning primitive and not as well adapted to marine life as later mosasaurs). They generally retained relatively small sizes compared to later giant mosasaurs. The tethysaurines appeared during the Turonian and went extinct in the Santonian, possibly outcompeted by more derived mosasaurs. The etymology of this group derives from the genus Tethysaurus (Tethys from the Greek goddess of the sea and sauros, Greek for "lizard").
- ^ "Fossilworks: Tethysaurinae". fossilworks.org. Retrieved 17 December 2021.
- ^ Palci, Alessandro; Caldwell, Michael W.; Papazzoni, Cesare A. (1 May 2013). "A new genus and subfamily of mosasaurs from the Upper Cretaceous of northern Italy". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 33 (3): 599–612. doi:10.1080/02724634.2013.731024. ISSN 0272-4634. S2CID 86646993.
- ^ "Mořský drak od Litomyšle". 14 April 2020.