Plesiosaur fossil discovery in Antarctica


This video says about itself:

Scientists discover a 150 million years old plesiosaur in Antarctica

21 December 2017

It is the first record of a plesiosaur from the Jurassic period in Antarctica. It is a carnivorous reptile of the sea that exceeded six meters in length. It was discovered in the Antarctic Peninsula, in a new paleontological site located 113 kilometers southwest of the Marambio Base in Seymour Island.

From AFP news agency:

Giant marine reptile lived in Antarctic 150 million years ago

December 22, 2017

Scientists in Argentina have found the remains of a giant carnivorous marine reptile, or plesiosaur, that lived 150 million years ago in Antarctica.

The four-finned reptile, which measured up to 12 meters (13 yards) long, dates from the late Jurassic period …

Soledad Cavalli, a paleontologist at Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council, said: “At this site, you can find a great diversity of fish, ammonites, some bivalves, but we did not expect to find such an ancient plesiosaur.”

The “surprising” discovery has never been documented, according to a statement from the National University of La Matanza, near Buenos Aires.

“The discovery is pretty extraordinary, because the rock types at the site weren’t thought conducive to the preservation of bones, like the vertebrae of this marine reptile”, Cavalli said.

The discovery site was a two-hour helicopter journey from Argentina’s Marambio Base on the tip of Antarctica, with the researchers set to continue their work in January, during the southern hemisphere’s summer.

Marcelo Reguero of the Argentine Antarctic Institute (IAA) added that Antarctica was at the time part of the Gondwana continent, which also included Australia, New Zealand, India, Madagascar, Africa and South America, before continental drift pushed them apart.

Antarctica breakthrough: Why 20 million-year-old intact fossil stunned geologists: here.

11 thoughts on “Plesiosaur fossil discovery in Antarctica

  1. Pingback: Marine animals revolution after dinosaur extinction | Dear Kitty. Some blog

  2. Pingback: Mosasaur fossils, new study | Dear Kitty. Some blog

  3. Pingback: Dinosaurs became extinct, sharks survived | Dear Kitty. Some blog

  4. Pingback: Plesiosaurs, contemporaries of dinosaurs | Dear Kitty. Some blog

  5. Pingback: Triassic dinosaur relative discovered in Antarctica | Dear Kitty. Some blog

  6. Pingback: Antarctic marine life recovery after dinosaurs’ extinction | Dear Kitty. Some blog

  7. Pingback: Before dinosaur extinction, life in trouble | Dear Kitty. Some blog

  8. Pingback: Dinosaur age rainforest discovery in Antarctica | Dear Kitty. Some blog

  9. Pingback: First frog fossil from Antarctica discovered | Dear Kitty. Some blog

  10. Pingback: Triassic Antarctic Lystrosaurus, new research | Dear Kitty. Some blog

  11. Pingback: Giant prehistoric seabirds discovery in Antarctica | Dear Kitty. Some blog

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.