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Abstract
Antarctic plesiosaurs are known from the Upper Cretaceous López de Bertodano and Snow Hill Island formations (Campanian to upper Maastrichtian), which crop out within the James Ross Basin region of the Antarctic Peninsula. Here we describe the first plesiosaur fossils from the Lachman Crags Member of the Santa Marta Formation, north-western James Ross Island. This material constitutes the stratigraphically oldest plesiosaur occurrence presently known from Antarctica, extending the occurrence of plesiosaurians in this continent back to Santonian times (86.3–83.5 Mya). Furthermore, MN 7163-V represents the first plesiosaur from this region not referable to the Elasmosauridae nor Aristonectes, indicating a greater diversity of this group of aquatic reptiles in Antarctica than previously suspected.
Acknowledgements
This project was mainly funded by the the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientí- fico e Tecnoló gico [CNPq] grants nos. 557347/2005-0 and 307276/2009-0 to AWAK) and the Research Support Foundation of Rio de Janeiro State (Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Ampara à Pesquisa do Rio de Janeiro [FAPERJ] grant no. E-26/102.779/2008 to AWAK). We wish to thank the Brazilian Navy for logistical and technical support during the expedition to Antarctica, Dr Zulma Gasparini from the La Plata Museum, La Plata, for advice and help with the bibliography, Benjamin Kear (Uppsala University), Tamaki Sato (Tokyo University) and Adam Smith (National Museum of Ireland) for several suggestions on the original version of the manuscript.