page_title: Latoplatecarpus
section_title: Discovery
hierarchical_section_title: Latoplatecarpus / Discovery
caption_attribution_description: English: Latoplatecarpus willistoni skull in oblique ventral view (original). From the Pierre Formation, Morden, Manitoba. Specimen number TMP 1984 162 0001. On display at the Royal Tyrrell Museum, Alberta, Canada.
context_page_description: Latoplatecarpus is an extinct genus of plioplatecarpine mosasaur known from the Late Cretaceous of the northern Gulf of Mexico and the Western Interior Basin of North America.
context_section_description: Latoplatecarpus was named by Takuya Konishi and Michael W. Caldwell in 2011 and the type species is Latoplatecarpus willistoni. L. willistoni is known from the holotype TMP 84.162.01, a nearly complete skull, including the mandible and dentary, and a partial postcranial skeleton. The holotype was collected in the Pembina Mountain, in southern Manitoba, from the Pembina Member of the Pierre Shale, dating to the early middle Campanian stage of the Late Cretaceous period, about 80.5 million years ago. Three specimens are also referred to this species, including DMNH 8769 (a very well preserved cranial and postcranial skeleton), SDSMT 30139 and AMNH 2182.
  Konishi and Caldwell reassigned a second species, L. nichollsae, to this genus from Plioplatecarpus. A new phylogenetic analysis performed by them failed to recover the monophyly of the genus, however it found the North American referred material (e.g. FMNHPR 465, FMNHPR 467 and GSATC 220) of the dubious Platecarpus somenensis to nest within L. nichollsae. The same conclusion has been made based on the ontogenetic, biostratigraphic, and paleobiogeographic data and interpretations.
caption: Skull
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