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. Ricardo Araújo stands proudly next…
Astute viewers of BBC's plesiosaur-fest on Planet Dinosaur this week may have spotted my name dash across the screen at the end credits. 'Fight for Life', the fourth in the series, was the first episode, and so far as I'm aware only episode, to plunge us into the Mesozoic oceans and introduce…
The Lottery Heritage Fund has purchased an enormous pliosaur skull from the Kimmeridge Clay of the Dorset coast. On 8th July 2011 the pliosaur hits the media again! The new Pliosaur display in the Jurassic Coast Gallery of Dorchester County Museum will be formally opened, with David Attenborough as special guest. The…
During the past decade several dramatically named giant pliosaurs have hit the mainstream media, many claiming to be the biggest yet discovered. But only a trickle of peer-reviewed literature has been published to accompany these news stories. The lack of published data makes it really difficult to sift the facts from the…
A couple of new plesiosaur figures will be released in 2011, both from blossoming company CollectA. As a UK-based company CollectA has a tendency to choose British taxa, sometimes rather obscure ones. So forget Elasmosaurus or Kronosaurus, CollectA have gone out of their way to produce the first ever replica of two…
I'm pleased to present a guest article by journalism student Marc Vincent. The subject is the naming of Meyerasaurus, a topic that links in quite nicely with a previous post. Marc produced the article for his university course. The quotes from myself are the result of an interview Marc conducted as part…
The discovery of a new plesiosaur specimen was recently announced by the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, South Dakota, USA. 11-year-old Devon Zimmerman noticed the skull and part of the backbone on the bank of the Missouri River, near Pickstown, South Dakota, during a vacation with parents Duane and DeeAnn…
A press release on the finds from the 2007 season has been released by the University of Oslo. You can find more information, and images from the expeditions on the University web site. The news is, of course, dominated by the large pliosaur, which is reliably estimated as 15 meters long. The paddle alone is 3 meters long.…