England: plesiosaur fossil found by electrician

A report from the BBC; however, with two strange points:

Dinosaur named after electrician

A 70 million-year-old plesiosaur skeleton may be named after the electrician who found it, experts said.

The 4m-long dinosaur is the first of its age to be found and provides a missing link in its evolution, a Rotunda Geology Group spokeswoman said.

Plesiosaurs were big reptiles, living at the same time as dinosaurs.

However, they were not dinosaurs themselves.

Mark Evans, a plesiosaur expert from Leicester Museums, said it was one of the few plesiosaur skeletons from the early part of the Cretaceous period.

“We know about earlier plesiosaurs from the Jurassic period and ones from later on in the Cretaceous, so this new specimen fills a gap in our knowledge very nicely” he said.

“Although it looks like it belongs to a group of plesiosaurs with long necks, this plesiosaur is a new one, and will need a new name all of its own.”

This statement by Mr Evans contradicts the 70 million age claimed earlier in the BBC report, as that would put the fossil in the late Cretaceous, ‘just’ five million years before plesiosaurs, and dinosaurs, became extinct.

An earlier, probably more accurate, BBC report claims 132 million for this find.