Tag: plesiosaur
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Jurassic Sea Monster Resurfaces: Rare Fossil Unveils Secrets of Plesiosaur Evolution
SciTechDaily has a story about the discovery of a new plesiosaur in Gernany. The fossil specimen is a remarkably preserved Plesiopterys wildi from Holzmaden’s Posidonienschiefer Formation. It sheds light on the diversity of plesiosaurs during the early Jurassic Period about 180 million years ago. The research was published in the journal PeerJ Life and Environment.…
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Fossils Preserve Both Skin and Scales from an Ancient Sea Monster
The New York Times’ Trilobites column has news of a breathtaking plesiosaur specimen. The animal lived about 183 million years ago during the Jurassic Period. The fossils were found in the legendary Posidonia Shale of southern Germany and excavated in from a quarry near Holzmaden in 1940. The specimen was prepared in 2020. At that…
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Paleontologists Crack Plesiosaur “Four-Wing” Mystery
SciTechDaily has a piece about how plesiosaurs swam. How did plesiosaur swim in the oceans? A new paper in the journal Scientific Reports looked into the “four-wing problem” in plesiosaur swimming. A research team may have unlocked the mystery of how the ancient marine reptile, the plesiosaur, moved by developing a bio-inspired control system that…
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Plesiosaur unearthed in 1995 found to have been long-necked marine reptile
Phys.org has a story about a recently described plesiosaur. Discovered back in 1995, Serpentisuchops pfisterae, which means roughly “creature with a snaky crocface”, has been described as a plesiosaur. Plesiosaurs generally come in two varieties, those with a long, snake-like neck and a small head, and those with a shorter neck and a head with…
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Mary Anning: A hunt without a kill
Cosmos Magazine has a post about Mary Anning. Mary died on March 9th, 1847 at the age of 47. She made important contributions to paleontology back in the early 1800s. She was a very interesting person who found some of the first Ichthyosaurs, Plesiosaurs, and pterosaurs. There are a few biographies of her life (The…
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Palaeocast Episode 108: Plesiosaurs
Palaeocast has a new episode about Plesiosaurs. The discussion touches on the history of plesiosaurs and some of the opalized fossils from Coober Pedy in South Australia. Plesiosaurs are some of the most easily recognisable animals in the fossil record. Simply uttering the words ‘Loch Ness Monster’ can conjure a reasonably accurate image of what…
