Eromangasaurus, Kear, 2005 b

Vakil, Vikram, Webb, Gregory & Cook, Alex, 2021, Taxonomic utility of Early Cretaceous Australian plesiosaurian vertebrae, Palaeontologia Electronica (a 30) 24 (3), pp. 1-44 : 7

Genus EROMANGASAURUS Kear, 2005b

Type species. Eromangasaurus australis (Sachs, 2005) .

Remarks. Eromangasaurus was erected by Kear (2005b) on the basis of a badly crushed skull (QM F11050), the posterior part of which was associated with a fused atlas-axis complex and three cervical vertebrae (QM F12216, QM F12217), recovered from the upper Albian Toolebuc Formation near Maxwelton at Yambore Creek in Queensland. An additional two cervical vertebrae (QM F12219) were recovered subsequently along with the anterior portion of the skull (for a history of the material, see Persson, 1982). Persson (1982) initially referred the material with reservation to Woolungasaurus glendowerensis Persson, 1960 based only on cervical centra. However, Welles (1962) and later Kear (2003) considered W. glendowerensis to be a nomen dubium owing to its lack of diagnostic characters, and the latter considered this material to represent a new, undescribed genus and species of elasmosaurid (see also Thulborn and Turner, 1993). Sachs (2004) referred QM F11050 to Tuarangisaurus Wiffen and Moisley, 1986 , a genus previously known from New Zealand (Wiffen and Moisley, 1986; O’Gorman et al., 2017). Then in 2005, Sachs and Kear independently described new taxonomic names for the specimen, with Sachs (2005) erecting the species Tuarangisaurus australis and Kear (2005b) erecting the new genus and species Eromangasaurus carinognathus . Subsequently, Kear (2007) demonstrated that the skull of Tuarangisaurus keyesi (the type species) differed substantially from QM F11050, supporting generic distinction. Recognizing the priority of Sach’s (2005) species name, the new combination Eromangasaurus australis was established for QM F11050 (Kear, 2007) and has been maintained in subsequent studies (e.g., Druckenmiller and Knutsen, 2012).