Pluridens

Pluridens
Temporal range: Late Cretaceous 70.6–66 Ma
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Skull of Pluridens serpentis
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Reptilia
Order: Squamata
Clade: †Mosasauria
Family: †Mosasauridae
Tribe: †Pluridensini
Genus: †Pluridens
Lingham-Soliar, 1998
Species
  • P. calabaria Longrich, 2016
  • P. serpentis Longrich, 2021
  • P. walkeri Lingham-Soliar, 1998 (type)

Pluridens ("many teeth") is an extinct genus of marine lizard belonging to the Mosasauridae. Pluridens is placed in the subfamily Halisaurinae with the genera Phosphorosaurus, Eonatator and Halisaurus.[1] Compared to related halisaurines, Pluridens had longer jaws with more teeth, and smaller eyes. It also grew large size, measuring 5–6 m (16–20 ft) long and perhaps over 9 m (30 ft) in some individuals.[2] The jaws in some specimens are robust, and sometimes show injuries suggestive of combat. The jaws may have been used for fighting over mates or territories.

Pluridens lived in the shallow seas of West Africa during the late Campanian-Maastrichtian. Three species of are known, P. walkeri, P. calabaria, and P. serpentis. P. walkeri is known from the Maastrichtian of southwest Niger,[3] whereas P. calabaria is found in slightly older (late Campanian) deposits in Nigeria.[4] P. serpentis was found in Maastrichtian deposits in Morocco. Pluridens was briefly synonymized with Halisaurus by Lindgren and Siverson (2005),[5] but subsequent studies rejected the synonymy.[1][6]

  1. ^ a b Konishi, Takuya; Caldwell, Michael W.; Nishimura, Tomohiro; Sakurai, Kazuhiko; Tanoue, Kyo (2015). "A new halisaurine mosasaur (Squamata: Halisaurinae) from Japan: the first record in the western Pacific realm and the first documented insights into binocular vision in mosasaurs". Journal of Systematic Palaeontology: 1–31. doi:10.1080/14772019.2015.1113447.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Longrich2021 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ T. Lingham-Soliar. 1998. A new mosasaur Pluridens walkeri from the Upper Cretaceous, Maastrichtian of the Iullemmeden Basin, southwest Niger. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 18(4):709-707.
  4. ^ Nicholas R. Longrich (2016). "A new species of Pluridens (Mosasauridae: Halisaurinae) from the upper Campanian of Southern Nigeria". Cretaceous Research. in press. doi:10.1016/j.cretres.2016.03.013.
  5. ^ Lindgren J, Siverson M. 2005. Halisaurus sternbergii, a small mosasaur with an intercontinental distribution. Journal of Paleontology 79 (4): 763–773.
  6. ^ Michael J. Polcyn, Johan Lindgren, Nathalie Bardet, Dirk Cornelissen, Louis Verding, and Anne S. Schulp (2012) Description of new specimens of Halisaurus arambourgi Bardet & Pereda Suberbiola, 2005 and the relationships of Halisaurinae. Bulletin de la Société Géologique de France 183:123-136 doi:10.2113/gssgfbull.183.2.123 http://bsgf.geoscienceworld.org/content/183/2/123.abstract