Multimedia Gallery
Juvenile and Mother Plesiosaur (Image 1)
An artist's depiction of how a mother and juvenile plesiosaur probably looked.
The well-preserved fossil skeleton of a juvenile plesiosaur--a marine reptile that swam the waters of the Southern Ocean roughly 70 million years ago--was recovered by an American-Argentine research team in Antarctica. The fossil remains represent one of the most-complete plesiosaur skeletons ever found and is thought to be the best-articulated fossil skeleton ever recovered from Antarctica. The creature would have inhabited Antarctic waters during a period when the Earth and oceans were far warmer than they are today.
This image accompanied NSF press release, "Volcanic Blast Likely Killed and Preserved Juvenile Fossil Plesiosaur Found in Antarctica." [See related image Here.]
Credit: Nicolle Rager Fuller, National Science Foundation
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