User:Abyssal/Aphrosaurus

Aphrosaurus be real careful with sources The type specimen of Aphrosaurus furlongi was discovered by a man named Robert Leard in the Panoche Hills of Fresno County, California. Leard's discovery occurred in the local outcrops of the Late Cretaceous Moreno Formation. The remains he found included some vertebrae, pelvic bones, and both hind flippers. The specimen was excavated by a field crew led by Chester Stock. Reconstructing the history of this excavation is complicated by the fact that no one has located Stock's field notes for the dig. Nevertheless, on February 26th, 1939, Stock took a photograph of his crew and their work on the specimen revealing that they had uncovered one of its flippers. Apart from Stock, the crew excavating the Aphrosaurus type specimen included Arthur Drescher and Lloyd Lewis. The specimen is now curated by the Los Angeles County Museum and Caltech as LACM/CIT-2748. In 1943 paleontologist Samuel P. Welles formally erected the new genus and species Aphrosaurus furlongi for LACM/CIT-2748. The genus name Aphrosaurus means "seafoam lizard". The species epithet of Aphrosaurus furlongi honors Eustace L. Furlong, who prepared fossils for Stock. In his 1943 description, Welles speculated that Aphrosaurus was a less active animal than Morenosaurus, another plesiosaur.