Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have analysed the soft tissue from a fossilised plesiosaur for the first time, making an unexpected discovery.
These marine dinosaurs had serpentine necks and a sea turtle-like body and have been discovered all over the world. They’ve been known about for 200 years, but a perfectly preserved skeleton has uncovered new information about this Jurassic dinosaur.
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The skeleton was excavated near Holzmaden in Germany, with rare fossilised soft tissues found in the tail and one of flipper regions.
‘The surrounding host rock was carefully removed away from the fossil,’ says Miguel Marx, a doctoral student at Lund University. ‘We then used a broad range of microscopic and spectral metric techniques to analyse the fossilised soft tissue for the first time in great detail.’
Scientists have previously expected plesiosaurs to be scaleless, like other marine reptiles. But this new excavation has shown a ‘mosaic of scales and scaleless skin’ – something never reported before in this species. We now have a much better idea of what they’d have looked like when they were alive.
They had smooth, scaleless skin, but had scales in different parts of their body. These scales likely assisted with swimming ability, and added a protective covering while they moved quickly along rough seabeds while hunting.
Top image: Skeleton of the new plesiosaur at the Urwelt-Museum Hauff in Holzmaden, Germany (credit: Klaus Nilkens/Urwelt-Museum Hauff)
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