Arctic predator graveyard
Norwegian scientists have discovered the first complete skeleton of a giant pliosaur among the remains of 28 plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs in a 150-million-year-old Jurassic graveyard on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen.
The University of Oslo palaeontologists who made the discoveries have nicknamed the ten-metre-long skeleton ‘The Monster’, as it has “vertebrae the size of dinner plates and teeth the size of cucumbers,” said Joern Hurum, an assistant professor at the university.
Rather than being the result of a single cataclysm, the graveyard was probably the result of favourable fossilization conditions, the scientists believe. They said that it represents “one of the most important new sites for marine reptiles to have been discovered in the last several decades.”
The University of Oslo palaeontologists who made the discoveries have nicknamed the ten-metre-long skeleton ‘The Monster’, as it has “vertebrae the size of dinner plates and teeth the size of cucumbers,” said Joern Hurum, an assistant professor at the university.
Rather than being the result of a single cataclysm, the graveyard was probably the result of favourable fossilization conditions, the scientists believe. They said that it represents “one of the most important new sites for marine reptiles to have been discovered in the last several decades.”
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