Fluvionectes
genus of reptile (fossil)
Fluvionectes (meaning "river swimmer", from both Latin and Greek) is a genus of elasmosaurid plesiosaur found in the Dinosaur Park Formation in Alberta, Canada.
Description
The holotype specimen of Fluvionectes is a partial skeleton preserving an osteologically mature, likely a young adult individual that would have reached 5–5.2 m (16–17 ft) long and weighed 392 kilograms (864 lb). A more mature, larger, but more fragmentary specimen (TMP 2009.037.0007) is also known, consisting of a partial rib and gastralium, and left humerus, indicating that this taxon may have reached 7 m (23 ft) in maximum body length. A number of other fragmentary specimens are also known.
The holotype skeleton had 76 gastroliths, largely disc-shaped stones. All were composed of black chert and grey quartzite, the largest of which weighed 15.3 grams.
Classification
The describers placed Fluvionectes in Elasmosauridae, in a clade with Albertonectes, Nakonanectes, Styxosaurus, and Terminonatator, which by definition places it in the Elasmosaurinae subfamily.
Palaeoecology
Fluvionectes appears to have been a freshwater and brackish water animal based on its discovery from a non-marine to paralic sedimentary unit. Both the holotype and the largest specimen (TMP 2009.037.0007) were found in brackish estuarine deposits, but a number of other specimens were found in nearby freshwater fluvial deposits. This is significantly different in contrast to most elasmosaurs which were oceanic.
“Fluvionectes” enters the record as genus of reptile (fossil). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Fluvionectes, genus and reptile can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Fluvionectes” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Fluvionectes, genus and reptile provides the most credible route into that argument.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q105581523. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fluvionectes” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.