Shastasauridae

Shastasauridae Temporal range: Triassic
Skeleton of Shastasaurus sikanniensis
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Reptilia
Order:	†Ichthyosauria
Infraorder:	†Shastasauria Motani, 1999
Family:	†Shastasauridae Merriam, 1895
Genera
?†Besanosaurus †Himalayasaurus †Shastasaurus †Shonisaurus

Life restoration of the shastasaurid Shonisaurus popularis

Shastasauridae is an extinct family of Triassic ichthyosaurs that includes the genera Shastasaurus and Shonisaurus. Many other Triassic ichthyosaurs have been assigned to Shastasauridae in the past, but recent phylogenetic analyses suggest that these species form an evolutionary grade of early ichthyosaurs rather than a true clade or evolutionary grouping that can be called Shastasauridae. Shastasauridae was named by American paleontologist John Campbell Merriam in 1895 along with the newly described genus Shastasaurus. In 1999, Ryosuke Motani erected the clade Shastasauria to include Shastasaurus, Shonisaurus, and several other traditional shastasaurids, defining it as a stem-based taxon including "all merriamosaurians more closely related to Shastasaurus pacificus than to Ichthyosaurus communis." He also redefined Shastasauridae as a node-based taxon including "the last common ancestor of Shastasaurus pacificus and Besanosaurus leptorhynchus, and all its descendants" and Shastasaurinae, which Merriam named in 1908, as a stem taxon including "the last common ancestor of Shastasaurus and Shonisaurus, and all its descendants." In an alternative classification scheme, paleontologist Michael Maisch restricted Shastasauridae to the genus Shastasaurus and placed Shonisaurus and Besanosaurus in their own monotypic families, Shonisauridae and Besanosauridae.