pelagosaur

plural pelagosaurs

1. Any of the extinct crocodile-like animals of genus †Pelagosaurus which lived during the Jurassic period.

   SINCE, aflap o'er some dim Jurassic prairie, Pterodactyl seized on pelagosaur; In heraldry-book and bestiary Have been limned the beasts of the days of yore.

   1915, Josiah Gilbert Holland, Richard Watson Gilder, The Century: A Popular Quarterly - Volume 89, page 312

   3 more examples

   In still older formations, such as the Lower Oolites and Lias, there were, however, many long-snouted crocodiles, such as the steneosaurs (Steneosaurus) and pelagosaurs (Pelagosaurus), in which the socket of the eye is divided from the lower temporal fossa by a bony bar, as shown in the figure on p. 13.

   1896, Richard Lydekker, Reptiles and fishes, page 32

   The order Crocodilia comprised, besides terrestrial forms, extinct marine crocodiles such as the genus mystriosaur and the pelagosaur—both lower jurassic forms (one hundred and fifty million years ago).

   1969, Rodolfo Riascos Llinás, Neurobiology of Cerebellar Evolution and Development, page 431

   A complication not found in eusuchians occurs in some marine mesosuchians (i.e., mystriosaurs, pelagosaurs), in which the eustachian system may have been connected with the nasal passages, possibly a hydrostatic adaptation for protection of the auditory organs in diving animals (Antunes, 1967b).

   1973, Carl Gans, Thomas Sturges Parsons, Biology of the Reptilia, page 278