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 …
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. The spectacular specimen was discovered at Black Ven, …
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). The fossil is from Lyme Regis and is identified as Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus. Most unstudied plesiosaurs …
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). The specimen was collected about 20 years ago and is estimated to be …