page_title: Aristonectes
section_title: Classification
hierarchical_section_title: Aristonectes / Classification
caption_attribution_description: English: Life reconstruction of Aristonectes quiriquinensis
context_page_description: Aristonectes is an extinct genus of plesiosaur from the Late Cretaceous Paso del Sapo Formation of what is now Argentina, the Quiriquina Formation of Chile and the Lopez de Bertodano Formation of Antarctica. The type species is Aristonectes parvidens, first named by Cabrera in 1941.
context_section_description: Aristonectes was classified variously since its original 1941 description, but a 2003 review of plesiosaurs from Patagonia conducted by Gasparini et al. (2003) found that Aristonectes was most closely related to elasmosaurid plesiosaurs like Elasmosaurus. The authors also considered Morturneria a junior synonym of Aristonectes because the former's holotype has unfused neural arches of the vertebrae indicative of juvenile status. Subsequent study, however, revalidated Morturneria based on non-ontogenetic differences from Aristonectes.
  Aristonectes was placed within its own family, Aristonectidae, along with Tatenectes, Kaiwhekea, and Kimmerosaurus, by O'Keefe and Street (2009), as sister family of the polycotylid cryptoclidoids. However, subsequent studies (Otero et al., 2014) returned Aristonectes to Elasmosauridae, recovering the genus as a derived elasmosaurid and therefore relegating Aristonectidae to a subfamily of Elasmosauridae, as Aristonectinae.
caption: Life reconstruction of Aristonectes quiriquinensis
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