This Rare Sea Monster Fossil Is Providing A Clearer Picture Of What Extinct Creatures Of The Deep Looked Like
Between 66 million and 215 million years ago, long-necked reptiles called plesiosaurs inhabited the world’s oceans.
By examining their fossilized skeletons, paleontologists have learned a lot about these ancient sea monsters. However, it’s hard to tell what the now-extinct creatures actually looked like just from their bones.
A new discovery has helped provide a clearer picture of their appearance and may even reveal how the creatures moved throughout their environment.
Scientists have reexamined an old plesiosaur fossil and came to the realization that its body was covered with both smooth skin and small scales. The fossil had been sitting in storage at a museum for decades.
“These are iconic animals, and the way we reconstruct them hasn’t changed for nearly 200 years, so this is a big update,” said Miguel Marx, the lead author of the study and a paleobiologist at Sweden’s Lund University.
“It changes our perspective on their evolutionary history and how they adapted to life in the ocean.”
For the study, the research team analyzed samples of soft tissue from a 183-million-year-old plesiosaur. The specimen, known as MH7, was almost 15 feet long.
It was first discovered in 1940 in a quarry near Holzmaden, Germany. It was briefly buried in a garden during World War II to protect it from damage.
After it was unburied, MH7 was transferred to storage at Urwelt-Museum Hauff. The fossil has remained there for about 75 years.
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In 2020, it was finally taken out of storage and assembled. Some of the creature’s soft tissues were preserved due to the ocean chemistry of the region it was found in.
The preservation allowed the researchers to study 183 million-year-old skin, which is an opportunity that doesn’t come around very often.
The team collected tiny samples from the tail and flipper. They processed the samples to remove any minerals and then evaluated them under a microscope.
Their analysis revealed smooth skin on MH7’s tail and scaly skin on the back edge of its flippers. The researchers were surprised, as they had not been expecting to find scales.
Overall, the findings suggest that the plesiosaur was somewhere between a “green sea turtle with scales and the [smooth-skinned] leatherback turtle,” according to Marx.
Only around eight plesiosaurs with some of their soft tissue still preserved have ever been found. Many of them are housed in museums that don’t want to see the specimens destroyed for research. So, studying the sea monster has always posed a challenge.
It is the first time that an in-depth analysis of fossilized soft tissues from a plesiosaur has been conducted. The researchers believe the plesiosaur’s scaly skin would have helped it propel through the water or grip the seafloor as it searched for food.
Meanwhile, the smooth skin may have made the plesiosaur a more efficient swimmer.
The study was published in Current Biology.
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