Parvinatator wapitiensis (Nicholls and Brinkman, 1995). Early Triassic, was once considered the basalmost ichthyosaur. Here it nests between Chaohusaurus and Qianichthyosaurus. The fore flippers were quite large. Unfortunately very little else of this ichthyosaur is known. The reconstruction above indicates that the posterior skull had been taphonomically rotated forward, breaking the fragile jugal below the orbit. Several bones were originally mididentified. The posterior jugal never expands in sister taxa, which means the posterior portion is the anterior quadratojugal. Other bones are corrected here alongside the original illustration (upper right). The manus (flipper) demonstrates that certain side-by-side phalanges in digits 4 and 5 fused together. |
