Kawanectes
Sign in to saveKawanectes (meaning "Kawas swimmer") is an extinct genus of elasmosaurid plesiosaur, a type of long-necked marine reptile, that lived in the marginal marine, probably estuarine, environment of Late Cretaceous Patagonia. The genus contains a single species, Kawanectes lafquenianum, described in 2016 by José P. O'Gorman.
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- 3.8
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- taxon name
- Kawanectes
- start time
- 72000000-0
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- Kawanectes
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- Description
- Discovery and naming
- Classification
- Paleoecology
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Kawanectes (meaning "Kawas swimmer") is an extinct genus of elasmosaurid plesiosaur, a type of long-necked marine reptile, that lived in the marginal marine, probably estuarine, environment of Late Cretaceous Patagonia. The genus contains a single species, Kawanectes lafquenianum, described in 2016 by José P. O'Gorman.
== Description == thumb|left|Size comparison With a total adult body length measuring between , Kawanectes was small for an elasmosaurid. It belongs to the "non-elongated" group of elasmosaurids, meaning that its cervical vertebrae are not extremely lengthened, neither do they show great variability in length. The MCS specimen preserves 15 cervical vertebrae and 15 dorsal vertebrae, while the holotype preserves 10 caudal vertebrae; the true number of cervical and caudal vertebrae is unknown due to the incompleteness of the specimens.