Leptonectidae
| Leptonectids Temporal range: Late Triassic–Early Jurassic,
| |
|---|---|
| |
| Skeleton of Leptonectes tenuirostris | |
Scientific classification 
| |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Reptilia |
| Superorder: | †Ichthyopterygia |
| Order: | †Ichthyosauria |
| Node: | †Neoichthyosauria |
| Family: | †Leptonectidae Maisch, 1998 |
| Genera | |
| |
Leptonectidae is a family of ichthyosaurs known from Late Triassic to Early Jurassic marine deposits in Europe. They were all small to medium-sized creatures, most noted for their very long, swordfish-like snouts, which could have been used like a weapon, slashing through schools of fish.[1][2]
Classification
[edit]
In their 2025 description of Xiphodracon, Lomax and colleagues recovered this taxon as the sister taxon to the genus Hauffiopteryx within the broader ichthyosaurian clade Neoichthyosauria. Based on this close relationship, they named the new clade Hauffiopterygia to house both genera. Using extended implied weights parsimony, the Hauffiopterygia was recovered within the family Leptonectidae, which comprises the genera Eurhinosaurus, Excalibosaurus, Leptonectes, and Wahlisaurus. Using equal weights parsimony, the Hauffiopterygia was instead recovered in a position diverging immediately after the Leptonectidae. The results of the former analysis, which are preferred by the researchers, are displayed in the cladogram below:[2]
References
[edit]- ^ McGowan and Motani, 2003. Handbook of Paleoherpetology: Ichthyopterygia, Part 8. 175 pp.
- ^ a b Lomax, Dean R.; Massare, Judy A.; Maxwell, Erin E. (September 2025). "A new long and narrow‐snouted ichthyosaur illuminates a complex faunal turnover during an undersampled Early Jurassic (Pliensbachian) interval". Papers in Palaeontology. 11 (5). doi:10.1002/spp2.70038. ISSN 2056-2799.
 | This Ichthyosaur-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |