A new basal mosasauroid from the Cenomanian (U. Cretaceous) of Slovenia with a review of mosasauroid phylogeny and evolution
Bibliographic record
Abstract
A new genus and species of basal mosasauroid reptile from the Cenomanian (Upper Cretaceous) of Slovenia, previously referred to as the “Trieste aigialosaur,” is described. The new taxon is known from only a single specimen including a well-preserved postcranial skeleton and parts of the skull (i.e., left quadrate, left surangular-prearticular complex, and left angular and splenial). Morphological characters of the quadrate and postcranial skeleton distinguish this new taxon from other basal mosasauroids such as Aigialosaurus dalmaticus, Aigialosaurus (=Opetiosau-rus) bucchichi and Carsosaurus marchesettii. Cladistic parsimony analysis of a taxon character matrix composed of 135 characters and 31 terminal taxa resulted in the recovery of 12 equally parsimonious cladograms of 351 steps (CI = 0.48, HI = 0.52, and RI = 0.73). From these cladograms we present a phylogenetic hypothesis on the interrelationships of mosasauroids. Species assigned to Aigialosaurus form the basalmost mosasauroid clade. The new genus described here is reconstructed with Carsosaurus marchesettii in a clade that is the sistergroup to the following clade: (Haasiasaurus ((Halisaurinae, (Tethysaurus nopcsai (Yaguarasaurus columbianus, Russellosaurus coheni)) (Russellosaurina)))); the “Dallas aigialosaur,” Dallasaurus turneri, is found to be the basal-most mosasaurine. Arguments supporting the importance of pelvic evolution to the aquatic adaptations of mosasaurs are given along with a discussion of recent hypotheses of limb evolution in mosasauroids.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".