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Leptocleidus is an extinct genus of plesiosaur, belonging to the family Leptocleididae.Smith AS, Dyke GJ. 2008. The skull of the giant predatory pliosaur Rhomaleosaurus cramptoni: implications for plesiosaur phylogenetics. Naturwissenschaften e-published 2008. It was a small plesiosaur, measuring only up to .
Leptocleidus is known from the following sediments:
A specimen from the Vectis Formation (lower Aptian age), Isle of Wight, found in 1995 and seen as a "Leptocleidus sp.", was named as a separate genus Vectocleidus in 2012.
Leptocleidus, unlike many , lived in shallow and likely visited brackish and fresh water systems (such as the mouths of large rivers). This led Arthur Richard Ivor Cruickshank to infer that this movement to fresh water was an attempt to flee larger plesiosaurs and pliosaurs. Most species are known from The British Isles but L. capensis was discovered in Cape Province, South Africa.
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