A 100 million-year-old fossil of a sea dinosaur has just been discovered in outback Queensland and it could unlock the discovery of several new species of plesiosaur. The eight-year-old dino nerd in me is screaming.
The fossil consists of the head and body of a 5-7 metre long juvenile elasmosaur, which is a type of plesiosaur that existed alongside dinosaurs. If you’re a dinosaur nerd like me, you might have seen them in BBC’s Prehistoric Planet: they’re those absurdly long-necked creatures with jagged sharp teeth and round little bodies.
The elasmosaur find is a pretty big deal because it will be the first time a plesiosaur head and body will be held in a museum collection together.
“Because plesiosaurs were two-thirds neck, often the head would be separated from the body after death, which makes it very hard to find a fossil preserving both together, so we are using CT scanning to give us an insight into these magnificent animals,” Queensland Museum Network senior scientist and Curator of Palaeontology Dr Espen Knutsen said, per 9 News.
“We were extremely excited when we saw this fossil – it is like the Rosetta Stone of marine palaeontology as it may hold the key to unravelling the diversity and evolution of long-necked plesiosaurs in Cretaceous Australia,” Knutsen said.
The elasmosaur was found by cattle grazing ranch owner Cassandra and her two friends Sally and Cynthia, who consider themselves amateur palaeontologists. And that wasn’t all they uncovered.
Along with the new fossil palaeontologists also collected several plesiosaur and ichthyosaur skeletons, which will be transported to Townsville for a closer looksie.
Plesiosaurs and other sea creature fossils are actually found all over Queensland’s outback because that area was covered by ocean during the Cretaceous period, 145.5 to 65.5 million years ago.
Cassandra, Sally and Cynthia — who call themselves “the rock chicks” — meet up and go hunting for fossils around Cassandra’s cattle station every year and they’ve made other cool discoveries in the past.
Between the three of them, they’ve discovered a plesiosaur each, a kronosaurus, an ichthyosaur and a few types of fish and turtles.
Ummm, where can I form my own group of fossil-hunting girlies to roam the wilderness with? This is literally my dream job. (For legal reasons I didn’t mean that).
