The Family Plesioteuthididae are a group of elongate, flattened Cephalopod Molluscs known from Cretaceous deposits. Their exact taxonomic placement is unclear, with some palaeontologists regarding them as True Squid, Decapodiformes, while others believe them to be Vampire Squid, Vampyromorphida, a group more closely related to Octopus. While whole body fossils of Plesioteuthidids are known from exceptional deposits such as the Solnhoffen Limestone of Germany, most are known only from their gladius (a rigid internal structure that supports the squid's body).
In 1993 palaeontologist Mary Wade of the Queensland Museum described a series of exceptionally large Plesioteuthidid gladii from the late Early Cretaceous Allaru Formation of southern Queensland, the largest of which was 1.2 m in length, suggesting a living animal twice the size of the living Giant Pacific Octopus, Enteroctopus dofleini. She considered these fossils to belong to the genus Boreopeltis, a group otherwise restricted to the Northern Hemsiphere, and described them as a new species, Boreopeltis soniae.
In a paper published in the journal Paleontological Contributions on 8 October 2019, Dirk Fuchs of the Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und Geologie, re-examines the material from which Wade describes the material from which Wade described Boreopeltis soniae, as well as other specimens from the collection of the Kronosaurus Corner, a public museum in Richmond, Queensland.
Fuchs could not find any grounds for including the Allaru Formation materian within the genus Boreopeltis, noting that the specimens 'have little in common' with Boreopeltis, and that 'neither the anterior nor the posterior gladius part show a vague resemblance'. The Allaru Formation specimens have a pronounced median (middle) keel, which is absent in Boreopeltis, whereas Boreopeltis has two reinforcing lateral (side) keels, which are strongly pronounced in the midpart of the fossil and project forwards at the front, but which are completely absent in the Allaru Formation material. The Allaru Formation specimens also have a pronounced waist, absent in Boreopeltis, and the conus (lateral portion of the gladius) of the Allaru Formation specimens is flattened, while that of