Category «Commentary»

The Return of the Blockley Plesiosaur

In summer 2023 a plesiosaur skeleton was offered at auction by Sotheby’s that may have looked familiar. This notable specimen is the ‘Blockley Plesiosaur’, originally offered at auction by Sotheby’s in 2010. This is a potentially significant specimen so I’m flagging it up to briefly discuss the provenance, history, and taxonomic identity of this curious skeleton.

Six more years of new plesiosaur toys (2018–2023)

I need to catch up on several more years of new plesiosaur models. The notable new company on the block is PNSO, the Peking Nature-Science Organisation, although having pushed out an impressively prolific catalogue of prehistoric animal models, to date they have produced only one commercially available plesiosaur figure, a Kronosaurus in 2021.

The Plesiosaur’s Neck book – 1 month retrospective

A month has passed since my new book, The Plesiosaur’s Neck, was published. So, it’s a good time to reflect on some of the events and reactions that followed its release.

Firstly, it was exciting to see the book in the wild, particularly at the Heffers branch of Blackell’s in Oxford, where Adam Larkum was invited to decorate the windows with an array of creatures from the book.

Six years of new plesiosaur replicas (2012-2017)

It is hard to believe that the last time I wrote about plesiosaur toys here was in March 2011, over six years ago (https://plesiosauria.com/news/index.php/new-plesiosaur-replicas-for-2011/). Since then, many more new plesiosaur figures have hit the shelves, well, online stores – you’ll do well to find any of these toys in actual brick and mortar stores.