LiveScience has a story about a new species of plesiosaur.  Plesionectes longicollum, which means to “long-necked near-swimmer”, lived during the early Toarcian age (183 million to 174 million years ago), which is the early Jurassic.  The fossil specimen measures about 10 feet long and was found in 1978 from a quarry in Germany, part of the Posidonia Shale formation, known for its “exquisitely preserved fossils.”  Details were published in the journal PeerJ.

“This specimen has been in collections for decades, but previous studies never fully explored its distinctive anatomy,” study lead author Sven Sachs, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Natural History Museum of Bielefeld in Germany, said in a statement from the museum.

“Our detailed examination revealed an unusual combination of skeletal features that clearly distinguish it from all previously known plesiosaurs,” Sachs said. The work demonstrated that the Posidonia Shale beds contained a higher degree of reptile diversity than previously thought.

The new specimen is the oldest known plesiosaur from the town Holzmaden in southwest Germany, according to the statement. The animal was not yet an adult when it died, but based on its anatomy, researchers were able to classify it into a new genus and species.