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TOPIC: Ancient Marine Reptiles
Blobrana


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Pliosaur
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Palaeontologists have discovered the fossilised pliosaur skeleton  dated from  the  Jurassic-period  in Russia's Ulyanovsk Region
According to Geologist Vladimir Yefimov, scientists had so far uncovered the reptile's paw and needed funding to excavate the whole skeleton.

"We were walking along the Volga River, where we were conducting studies into sea reptiles. In one of these walks, we saw a fragment of the hind paw of a pliosaur. Judging by the lizard's paw, visible from the earth, we could judge that the length of the entire skeleton could be 12-15 meters. The skull of the pliosaur alone is more than two meters long" - Vladimir Yefimov.

The Pliosaurs were crocodile-shaped carnivorous reptiles with short necks, long heads, and powerful jaws. The 120-150 million-year-old specimen represents the  oldest reptile to be found in the region.

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Blobrana


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Elasmosaur
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 Scientists from Drumheller's Royal Tyrrell Museum have uncovered what could be the most complete specimen ever found in Alberta of a giant prehistoric marine reptile known as elasmosaur.
Researchers will spend the next two years painstakingly chipping and scraping the elasmosaur from three large blocks of earth, where it's sat for the past 65 to 70 million years.

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Blobrana


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Ancient leatherback turtle
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Along the high banks of the Eagle Creek drainage ditch in Summerville, bikers and runners travelled by, oblivious to the amazing find just below the swift moving water.
A white plastic bag and a handwritten index card in a recloseable bag reading, Do Not Touch, marked the spot where amateur fossil hunter Paul Bailey made the discovery of a lifetime the intact shell of a 30-million-year-old leatherback turtle.

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Blobrana


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Two-headed reptile
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Scientists have found what is thought to be the first example of a two-headed reptile in the fossil record.
The abnormal animal, belonging to a group of aquatic reptiles, was unearthed in northeastern China and dates to the time of the dinosaurs.
The specimen reveals that it must have been very young when it died and became fossilised, says lead researcher Eric Buffetaut.
Details of the fossil appear in the UK Royal Society journal Biology Letters.
This animal was a choristoderan, an extinct reptile that reached a length of one metre in adulthood and was characterised by a long neck - two in this case.

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Blobrana


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RE: Ancient Marine Reptiles
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The bones of a baby plesiosaur have been recovered from an Antarctic island, scientists reported Monday.
In life, 70 million years ago, the five-foot-long animal would have resembled Nessie, the long-necked creature reported to inhabit Scotland's Loch Ness.
The new fossil skeleton is one of the most complete of its type ever found, researchers said. It will go on display Wednesday at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology's Museum of Geology.
Plesiosaurs lived for millions of years in the then-warm southern ocean surrounding Antarctica, with adults growing as large as 32 feet long. With diamond-shaped fins they could "fly" through the water much as penguins do now.
The National Science Foundation said researchers battled freezing conditions and 70 mile-per-hour winds in recovering the fossil, which was too heavy to be carried out and had to be moved by helicopter.
Leaders of the 2005 expedition that recovered the plesiosaur were James E. Martin, curator of vertebrate palaeontology at the museum, Judd Case of Eastern Washington University and Marcelo Reguero of the Museo de La Plata, Argentina.
The researchers said the animal's stomach area was well-preserved, including forked ribs, sometimes into three prongs, and numerous small, rounded stomach stones probably used to help maintain buoyancy or to aid digestion.
The skeleton was found in an area covered with volcanic ash, leading them to speculate that the plesiosaur was killed in an eruption, either by the blast or by ash dumped in the ocean.

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Blobrana


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Millions of years ago, a young plesiosaur died and sunk to the bottom of what is now the Southern Ocean. Recently, palaeontologists found the well-preserved skeleton of this unfortunate juvenile in Antarctica, according to researchers who have been preparing the specimen for public exhibit.

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Blobrana


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A fossil-hunting trip to celebrate a son's homecoming resulted in the recent discovery of an ancient sea monster in central Montana.
Believed to be approximately 70 million years old, its skull and lower jaw represent the first complete skull of a long-necked plesiosaur found in Montana, according to Montana State University experts. The skull is said to be one of the best specimens of its kind in North America.

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Blobrana


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Scientists have stumbled upon the fossils of dozens of giant marine reptiles while investigating a 150 million-year-old dinosaur graveyard on an Arctic island off Norway.

Norwegian researchers found the skeletons of 28 reptiles - including a rare predator described as the "Tyrannosaurus Rex of the oceans" - in the Svalbard archipelago north of Norway.

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Blobrana


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Norwegian scientists have discovered a "treasure trove" of fossils belonging to giant sea reptiles that roamed the seas at the time of the dinosaurs.

The 150 million-year-old fossils were uncovered on the Arctic island chain of Svalbard - about halfway between Norway and the North Pole.
The finds belong to two groups of extinct marine reptiles - the plesiosaurs and the ichthyosaurs.
One skeleton has been nicknamed The Monster because of its enormous size.
These animals were the top predators living in what was then a relatively cool, deep sea.

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Blobrana


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South Australian scientists say they think two skeletons found in Coober Pedy and Andamooka represent new species of prehistoric marine reptile.

The fossils, preserved in an opalised form, may have been creatures that swam in the waters of what was once a sea 115 million years ago.

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