Remembering Richard Forrest
It is with great sadness that I take this personal look back at my friendship with fellow plesiosaur palaeontologist Richard Forrest. I think I first met Richard when I started to attend talks at the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society in 2003. However, my strongest early memory of Richard is from March…
Monquirasaurus
Monquirasaurus is a giant pliosaurid from Colombia, South America. Originally named by Hampe (1992) as a species of Kronosaurus (K. boyacensis), the skeleton was later allocated to the new genus Monquirasaurus by Noè and Gómez-Pérez (2021). The genus name derives from 'Monquira', the administrative division in which the holotype was discovered. Monquirasaurus skeleton. From Hampe…
The Stewartby Pliosaur and the 1967 Liopleurodon reconstruction
Newman and Tarlo (1967) In 1967, Barney Newman and Lambert Beverley Tarlo authored a three-page short article in the popular magazine 'Animals', a short-lived periodical published weekly by Purnell from 1963 to, at least, 1967... I'm not sure when it eventually fizzled out. Their article entitled "A Giant Marine Reptile From Bedfordshire" provides an…
Macroplata
Macroplata is a rhomaleosaurid plesiosaur from the Lower Jurassic of Warwickshire, UK. Macroplata was named and briefly described by Swinton (1930a) based on a single skeleton from Harbury, Warwickshire, and the skeleton was redescribed in detail by Ketchum and Smith (2010). Photograph of Macroplata tenuiceps in situ in Harbury, Warwickshire. White (1940)…
Monograph on Rhomaleosaurus thorntoni
Many readers will be familiar with the giant plesiosaur on display in the marine reptiles gallery of the Natural History Museum, London. This is a cast of the 7 metre long holotype of Rhomaleosaurus cramptoni, the original of which is housed in the National Museum of Ireland (Natural History) and formed the…
Book review: Plesiosaur Peril by Daniel Loxton
In Plesiosaur Peril, author Daniel Loxton plunges us into the Jurassic ocean, to recount a day in the life of a baby Cryptoclidus. The book is the third in Loxton's 'Tales of Prehistoric Life' series, which includes the stories Ankylosaur Attack and Pterosaur Troubles. In this short children's story we follow a juvenile Cryptoclidus…
Pliosaurus kevani – the Weymouth Bay Pliosaur
I've been rather quiet again recently, however, as coauthor of an article just published in PLOS ONE, I've good reason to come out of my shell today. The new paper describes and names the Weymouth Bay Pliosaur, a spectacular almost complete skull over 2m long. As discussed in the open access paper…