Selmasaurus rosselli, a new plioplatecarpine mosasaur (Squamata, Mosasauridae) from Alabama

Abstract

A mosasaur recently rediscovered in the collections of the University of Alabama Museum of Natural History represents a new genus and species of plioplatecarpine, Selmasaurus russelli. No accurate locality or stratigraphie data are available for the specimen, but it was collected from a chalky facies of the Selma Group (early Campanian-late Maestrichtian) in western or west-central Alabama. Selmasaurus displays an almost complete loss of intracranial mobility compared with the kinetic skulls of more generalized plioplatecarpines. It differs markedly from other known members of this subfamily of mosasaurs, but shares some characters with the North American genus Ectenosaurus and the African genus Goronyosaurus.