Skeleton of the new plesiosaur at the Urwelt-Museum Hauff in Holzmaden, Germany.Credit...Klaus Nilkens/Urwelt-Museum Hauff
Skin from the bottom half of the tail in the new plesiosaur.Credit...Klaus Nilkens/Urwelt-Museum Hauff
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 time, soft tissue was found from around the tail and trailing edge of the right forelimb. The research was published recently in the journal Current Biology.
With serpentine necks, flippers and a mouth full of needle-sharp teeth, plesiosaurs have captured imaginations since paleontologists uncovered the first specimen more than two centuries ago. Their skeletal anatomy is well documented, but their external appearance has largely remained a mystery.
Now researchers have conducted the first detailed analysis of plesiosaur soft tissue, offering a more complete look at what these real-life sea monsters might have looked like when they lived from 215 million to 66 million years ago.
Published Thursday in Current Biology, the findings suggest that some plesiosaurs had humanlike skin on their tail regions and fishy scales on their flippers, similar to the features of some living sea turtle species. The research highlights an evolutionary detour that runs counter to other ancient marine reptiles like ichthyosaurs and mosasaurs, which evolved away from scales in favor of skin, or much smaller scales, to allow them to move more efficiently through their marine habitats.
