Rhomaleosaurus thorntoni
R. thorntoni was first described briefly by Andrews (1922a). Smith and Benson (2014) described and figured R. thorntoni in detail in a monograph on the holotype specimen.
Category «Rhomaleosaurus»
Rhomaleosaurus zetlandicus
Mike Taylor studied the holotype of R. zetlandicus for his Ph.D. thesis and subsequently published a description of the cranial anatomy (Taylor, 1992). Vincent and Smith (2010) referred the holotype of R. propinquus to R. zetlandicus
Rhomaleosaurus cramptoni
The history of NMING F8785 (The holotype specimen of R. cramptoni) In 1848, the fossil skeleton of R. cramptoni was unearthed by workers in an alum quarry at Kettleness on the Yorkshire coast. The magnificent fossil was secured for five years at Mulgrave Castle, the home of the Marquis of Normanby, owner of the quarry. …
Rhomaleosaurus
Rhomaleosaurus is the largest known Lower Jurassic pliosaur and was the top predator in early Jurassic marine ecosystems. It has a reinforced skull to help resist torsion and a ferocious set of teeth, a combination of characters perfect for snatching and killing cephalopods, fish, and other marine reptiles. Historically, the genus Rhomaleosaurus has been interchangeable …
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 …
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 basis for my …
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. The spectacular specimen was discovered at Black Ven, …
New plesiosaur replicas for 2011
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 wonderful British Jurassic …