Wumengosaurus


Wumengosaurus is an extinct aquatic reptile from the Middle Triassic Guanling Formation of Guizhou, southwestern China. It was originally described as a basal eosauropterygian and usually is recovered as such by phylogenetic analyses, although one phylogeny has placed it as the sister taxon to Ichthyosauromorpha while refraining from a formal re-positioning. It was a relatively small reptile, measuring in total body length.
In 2021, Qin et al. described an additional specimen from Guizhou as a new species of Wumengosaurus, W. rotundicarpus.

Classification

In the 2023 description of Luopingosaurus, Xu et al. recovered Wumengosaurus as a derived pachypleurosaurid, as the sister taxon to the clade formed by Luopingosaurus and Honghesaurus. The results of their phylogenetic analyses are shown in the cladogram below: