Category «Lyme Regis»

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Thaumatodracon – the Wonder Dragon

In 2012 I co-presented a poster at the SVP annual meeting on a new plesiosaur from Lyme Regis, UK (see my article about it here). The long awaited follow up paper was finally published this summer in the latest volume of Palaeontographica A (Smith and Araújo 2017) and the beast now has a name, Thaumatodracon wiedenrothi, meaning ‘Wiedenroth’s Wonder Dragon’.

A new Lyme Regis pliosaur

Earlier this month I co-authored a poster at SVP 2012 describing a new pliosaur from the Sinemurian of Lyme Regis (Smith and Araújo 2012). I was unable to attend the conference in person so my collaborator and friend Ricardo Araujo was on hand to present our preliminary findings.

Plesiosaurus at the James Mitchel Museum, Galway, Ireland

I finally found the time to visit the James Mitchel Museum at the University of Galway, Ireland. The main plesiosaur in the museum is on display, mounted high on the wall at the far end of the museum (figured below).

Lyme Regis plesiosaur sold at auction

The almost complete three-dimensional skeleton of a plesiosaur from the Lower Jurassic of Lyme Regis, the famous fossil-hunting spot in Dorset, England, sold at auction last December (2005) at a closing bid of £30000 (some web-sites report the figure as over £35000).