Identification of the first postcranial skeleton of Aristonectes Cabrera (Plesiosauroidea, Elasmosauridae) from the upper Maastrichtian of the south-eastern Pacific, based on a bivariate graphic analysis

Abstract

Cervical vertebrae of elasmosaurids (Sauropterygia, Plesiosauroidea) have proven to be informative even at family level. The present paper uses a previously developed methodology based on bivariate graphic analysis that evaluates the proportion indices of cervical vertebrae in elasmosaurids, which is applied to a well-preserved postcranial specimen of this group recovered from upper Maastrichtian beds of central Chile. The plotting of such indices groups the Chilean material with other specimens from the Late Cretaceous of Argentina and Antarctica, the latter referred to the genus Aristonectes. This result allows us to identify the first relatively complete individual of the genus based on non-cranial characters. The identification of the Chilean specimen as Aristonectes sp. provides important new data on the postcranial skeleton of the genus, that has remained poorly known until now.