A new species of <i>Ectenosaurus</i> (Mosasauridae: Plioplatecarpinae) from western Kansas, USA, reveals a novel suite of osteological characters for the genus<sup>1</sup>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
FHSM VP-5515 is a medium-sized russellosaurine mosasaur collected in the 1970s in Logan County, western Kansas, USA. A suite of cranial features are unique to this specimen at the species level. One is a conspicuous lack of a predental rostrum on the premaxilla, whose dentigerous portion is spatula shaped in dorsoventral aspect. Furthermore, the frontal of FHSM VP-5515 exhibits the following unique combination of features: (1) the median dorsal keel absent; (2) straight, long preorbital borders converging anteriorly at 30° from each other; and (3) supraorbital border thick and extensive, clearly separating the prefrontal and the postorbitofrontal above the orbit. The fifth character pertains to the uniquely square outline of the intramandibular joint surface of the splenial, resulting from a robust dorsomedial flange. Finally, hitherto unreported on any mosasaur jaws, a deep notch excavates the dorsal border of the articular immediately posterior to the glenoid fossa. Examination of preexisting Ectenosaurus specimens suggests that this articular notching diagnoses the genus. Based on the unique suite of characteristics including the articular notch, we consequently hypothesize the following for FHSM VP-5515: (1) it is most comparable with the enigmatic russellosaurine Ectenosaurus clidastoides (Merriam, 1894); and (2) it represents a new species of Ectenosaurus.
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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) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
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".