Occitanosaurus
Encyclopedia
Occitanosaurus is an extinct
Extinction
In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms , normally a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point...

 genus
Genus
In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 of plesiosaur
Plesiosaur
Plesiosauroidea is an extinct clade of carnivorous plesiosaur marine reptiles. Plesiosauroids, are known from the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods...

 from the Early Jurassic
Early Jurassic
The Early Jurassic epoch is the earliest of three epochs of the Jurassic period...

 of what is now France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

. The type species
Type species
In biological nomenclature, a type species is both a concept and a practical system which is used in the classification and nomenclature of animals and plants. The value of a "type species" lies in the fact that it makes clear what is meant by a particular genus name. A type species is the species...

 is Occitanosaurus tournemirensis (originally "Plesiosaurus" tournemirensis), first named by Sciau et al. in 1990. Occitanosaurus was a plesiosaur similar to Elasmosaurus
Elasmosaurus
Elasmosaurus + σαυρος sauros 'lizard') is a genus of plesiosaur with an extremely long neck that lived in the Late Cretaceous period , 80.5 million years ago.-Description:...

; fossils consist of a single but nearly complete skeleton of an animal approximately 4 meters (13 ft) long.

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